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Lou Holtz and the professional failure that haunts me today

Jim Stafford with then-University of Arkansas coach Lou Holtz at the 1982 Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston.

The recent death of long-time college football coach Lou Holtz on March 4 stirred a lot of memories for me. Not all of them happy.

I’m ashamed to admit it was the biggest failure of my professional career.

Lou was University of Arkansas coach when I graduated college in 1978 and took a sportswriting position with the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith.

So, I joined the SWTR staff in the wake of Arkansas’ stunning victory over OU in the 1978 Orange Bowl. Lou Holtz was riding high as Arkansas coach.

The 31-6 upset of the Sooners by the Lou Holtz-led Razorbacks turned him into an almost mythical hero among Arkansas fans. He had become head coach before the 1977 season, replacing Arkansas legend Frank Broyles, who retired from coaching to assume a full-time role as Athletic Director.

After that first season success, Coach Holtz became a much-sought after speaker across the nation. He even made an appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

I saw that appearance and was amazed by Lou’s magic trick where he tore up a newspaper, wadded it up and then unfolded the wad into a fully restored paper.

I’ve seen Holtz do that trick countless times over the years, and I never figured out where he stashed the paper that replaced the one he tore up, or what happened to the shredded pages.

Anyway, for the first couple of years at the SWTR, my main roles were covering high school sports and doing layout on the sports desk. Eventually, I began attending selected Arkansas home games and writing sidebar stories to the main story written by our Sports Editor.

But in roughly 1982, I became Sports Editor, a position that afforded the opportunity to cover the Razorbacks on a more in-depth basis. For instance, I usually drove to Fayetteville on Tuesdays to attend practice and get some interviews with Lou and certain players for pre-game features.

I wouldn’t say that I was a full-time Razorback beat writer, but I covered all home games for the 1982 season, as well as the season-ending SMU game in Dallas and the Bluebonnet Bowl victory over Florida in Houston.

All that led up to August 1983, when I was preparing the paper’s annual football preview special section, which a lot of newspapers publish annually.

I’m not sure of the date, but an SWTR photographer and I drove to Fayetteville to interview Lou for our tabloid cover story. He welcomed us into his office and we sat down for the interview.

Almost all of my questions were total softballs, asking about certain players he expected to lead the team and looking forward to upcoming games. But near the end of the interview I asked him about the fact that despite all of his success at Arkansas he had not led the Hogs to the Cotton Bowl as SWC champions.

That set Lou off, and he got angry and animated.

“I’m tired of being asked about the Cotton Bowl all the time,” he said. “I’ll tell you right now, this is going to be my last doggone year at the University of Arkansas.”

I was taping this interview. So, I asked him if he was serious.

“I am, but if you say anything I will deny it.”

Whoa! Lou had lobbed a grenade into my pocket. Or the story of the year for Arkansas fans.

I have to admit, I wasn’t up to the moment.

As I drove back to Fort Smith, all I could think of is ‘why me?’ I was not a regular, daily beat reporter for the Hogs. If I broke this story, my reporting colleagues would think that I’m just trying to make a name for myself.

So, I kept it to myself. Call it a lack of courage, if you will. Because that’s what it was.

Pro-tip to young journalists: Don’t keep everything bottled up inside you. And don’t be afraid to share your fears or misgivings with a mentor or an editor. I should have gone straight to Jack Moseley, the SWTR’s editor, and asked him how to handle it.

I wrote my season preview with no mention of Lou’s comments and we published our special section. Less than two weeks later, an opportunity came up to take a position on The Daily Oklahoman sports desk, and I accepted it.

So, as I departed the SWTR, I left the tape of my conversation with Coach Holtz with a colleague and told him if Holtz did, indeed, resign at the end of the season, to write a story based on the interview.

I knew it would be embarrassing for me, but, well, I deserved it. And the story needed to be told.

Lou DID resign at the end of the season, and the SWTR published the story of his pre-season comments. I got a couple of calls from national college football reporters, who wrote about it, as well.

I’m so glad there was no internet or social media in 1983.

Today, it’s known that Lou Holtz did not resign at the end of that season. He was fired by Frank Broyles, in part because he had campaigned for Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who for decades opposed almost every advance in civil rights for African Americans.

But that doesn’t matter to me. I had the story. I sat on it. I paid the price in self-worth. It haunted me for the rest of my career, even if no one really knew or remembered.

Lou’s passing provided the opportunity to finally admit my failure in a public way.

It’s an important life lesson. Don’t be afraid to share your information or situation with a mentor. Don’t sit on the story.

Don’t be like me.

The old Double-Reverse Jinx does it again

OU receiver Isaiah Sategna races toward goal line in victory over LSU.

When OU wide receiver Isaiah Sategna blew past LSU defensive backs in busted coverage last week to catch a game-sealing 58-yard TD pass, I missed the moment.

I could say that I was out back on our patio grilling or answering an unexpected knock at the door, but it would not be true.

The truth is that because it was late in a really tight game and I was invested in the outcome as someone who has bought into OU, I found something else to do at that moment.

Why?

Well, turning my back on a close game in which I have a rooting interest goes back many decades. I’m not even sure what to call it. Lack of courage? Can’t face reality?

Call it what you will, but I prefer to call it my double-reverse jinx.

As a pre-teen in the early 1960s, the Arkansas Razorbacks were my team. I lived and died with the Hogs. In those days, you mostly had only radio broadcasts on which to follow college football games.

So, when the Hogs were playing on an autumn afternoon I was tuned in — until I wasn’t. I specifically remember, when, in the second half of a really close game with the Razorbacks in a precarious position, I abandoned the radio, ran out into the back yard and started throwing a football around.

A few minutes later, I went back in and caught a couple minutes of the broadcast, but the outcome was still pending. I went back outside.

When the Hogs won that game with me not listening, I decided that all their success hinged on me not ever listening again when the outcome was on the line. Somehow, I controlled their fate.

My double-reverse jinx helped the Hogs have a great decade of success in the ’60s.

Fast forward to the late ’80s when I worked on the sports desk as a copy editor at The Daily Oklahoman. That meant that my daily working hours were from roughly 3-4 pm until midnight or 1 am.

Those working hours afforded the opportunity to drive out to the then-new Remington Park race track in the early afternoon on almost a daily basis to watch and wager on the horse races.

You know where this is going.

Yep, if I had $2 on a horse and it was among the leaders as they came off the final turn and into the stretch, I would turn my back and only listen to the track announcer’s call. One afternoon, I had maybe $5 on a horse and spent the entire race in the men’s room, safe from ruining the outcome by actually watching my horse.

I took a lot of grief from my newsroom colleagues for not being able to watch the outcome of races on which I had wagered. But that’s how I rolled.

Fast forward to 2025. It’s still how I roll when watching the Sooners, the Razorbacks, even the Thunder. When the game gets tough and the outcome precarious, I bail on the game.

And then it happens. Shai Gilgious-Alexander hits a game clinching 3. Isaiah Sategna makes a game winning catch.

The old double-reverse jinx does it again.

BONUS CONTENT: Don Mecoy, a friend and past contributor to BlogOKC, shared some of his own experience in not jinxing his favorite teams:

“Super Bowl V. Cowboys-Colts. I got on my bike during the game and rode and rode. Didn’t help.

“National Championship game in 2000. Sat in the same spot on the couch throughout the first and second half. Really had to pee by the end of the game. And I was hungry too. Literally didn’t get up once.”

Thanks for this perspective, Don. I am not alone!

34 years later, article stirs memories of Arkansas’ stunning exit from SWC

Fort Smith Etc. magazine cover from 1991

Almost 34 years ago, a friend and former coworker at the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith, Ark., hit me up with a request.

Patti had left the paper to become editor of a new local magazine called Fort Smith Etc. She asked me to write an article on the University of Arkansas’ stunning move from the now late Southwest Conference to the the rival Southeast Conference.

Arkansas announced in August 1990 that it was switching conferences, and actually made the move the following year.

The unexpected conference divorce set off shockwaves among major conferences and ushered in what has become an era of constant realignment. By 1995, the SWC was no more, with most members welcomed into the Big Eight, now known as the Big 12.

Anyway, I wrote a pretty snarky — for me — 800-word piece for the magazine that listed all the things the Razorbacks would not miss from the SWC. It was published in the Nov./Dec. 1991 edition of Fort Smith Etc. magazine.

So, why am I writing about this now when I hadn’t given the article a thought for the last 30 years or so?

Turns out a high school friend of mine and Fort Smith native I’ll call ‘Will’ discovered he had digitized copy of the article on his personal computer. Will, who also had written for the magazine, emailed it to me. Thanks, Will!

After reading what I wrote more than three decades ago, I’m still proud of how it turned out and the fact that it is still relevant today in this era of conference reshuffling.

There are a couple of references to now departed venues like Barnhill and Reunion arenas (and misplaced campus locations for the universities of Alabama and Mississippi), but it’s not too dated, I think.

With all that said, I’m reprinting the article here in BlogOKC. Hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane.

Signed, sealed & delivered to the SEC

Mac Davis, the curly-haired crooner with the West Texas drawl, probably said it best for University of Arkansas fans when he sang something like “Happiness is the state of Texas in my rear view mirror.”

That was the theme when 10,000 or so Hog-callers began their final caravan across the Red River and out of the Lone State after the Southwest Conference basketball tournament last March. The Razorbacks had bid adieu to their SWC step-brothers with an astounding thrashing of the Texas Longhorns for the tournament championship, and along with the Razorback women’s team, hauled away every basketball prize the league had to offer.

When it was over, they called the Hogs in Dallas one final time, took the “Barnhill South” sign down from in front of Reunion Arena and began the pilgrimage back to the Ozarks. The last one out should have stopped and burned the bridge that spanned the Red River.

Without a glance in the rear view mirror, Razorback basketball fans got out the map and charted Knoxville and Birmingham and Jackson and all the Southeast Conference stops in between. The SEC, a conference that already featured teams in seven states, threw open the doors to Arkansas with a great big “Welcome.”

In Texas, the resentment of any Arkansas’ SWC success ran deep in such holes-in-the-prairie as Waco and Lubbock. The Razorbacks own a legacy of SWC success that can’t be exorcised from the conference record book. You can look it up.

Nevertheless, despite 76 years of SWC membership (Arkansas was a charter member), Arkansas forever remained an outsider who annually crashed a party that should have been a Texas-only affair.

Well, it is now. The SWC is reduced to eight Texas schools, any six of whom would be welcomed this very minute into the Trans-America Conference or the American South.

If there were any tears, they were those shed by Dallas merchants, who may have been the only people inTexas who realized from where the success of the SWC basketball tournament came.

Arkansas now has been signed, sealed and delivered to the Southeast Conference and there should be no nostalgic or sympathetic thoughts for the conference left behind in Texas.

Unsure? I offer ten reasons never to never look back at the SWC:

1. Average attendance at SouthwestConference basketball games in 1990-91 was 3,963. The SEC averaged 11,585.

2. Mississippi, with an average of 3,949, was the Southeast Conference’s poorest draw in basketball in 1990-’91. Texas Tech (2,465), TCU (3,868), SMU (2,938), Rice (2,873) and Houston (3,387) all had lower attendance averages.

3. Average attendance at Southwest Conference football games in 1990 was 39,382. The SEC averaged 63,870.

4. Southwest Conference teams were forced to play a limited football schedule for two seasons because one conference member, SMU, was given the “death penalty” by the NCAA; no SEC school has ever drawn the “death penalty.”

5. The Cotton Bowl is played in an open-air stadium, often in some of the most brutal weather Texas has to offer on New Year’s Day; the Sugar Bowl, played in the New Orleans SuperDome, is never threatened by the weather.

6. Southeast Conference football games are broadcast nationally over the Turner Broadcasting System cable network. SWC games are broadcast throughout Texas on something known as the “Raycom Sports Network.”

7. Arkansas will never have to face Southwest Conference officials when playing a Southeastern Conference game.

8. Texas A&M, a school full of traditions, features an all-male corps of cheerleaders.

9. There is no horror movie titled “The Tennessee Chainsaw Massacre”

10. Few natives from any Southeastern Conference state answer to the name of “Tex.”