By By BRIAN HAINES, Sports Writer
GREENVILLE — His face said it all.
Skip Holtz walked out of a hastily scheduled players meeting on Thursday afternoon to address the media and discuss the rumors surrounding himself and the recently vacated head coaching position at the University of South Florida. When he walked out of the Ward Sports Medicine Building, the answer was apparent before he even said a word.
A visibly emotional Holtz choked back tears as he informed reporters that the he is indeed leaving East Carolina to become only the second coach in USF football history.
“I have just walked out of one of the most difficult team meetings I have ever had,” Holtz said. “My wife (Janice) and I have made a decision to accept the offer that South Florida has made to me. Regardless of what has been reported, that offer was made at 2:30 p.m. today and we made the decision to turn and accept the offer.”
Holtz, who led the Pirates to a 9-5 record and their second straight Conference USA championship this season, has had several offers to coach other programs over the past, but said USF’s Tampa location is what tipped the scales in the Bulls favor.
“With my parents being an hour from there and my wife’s parents being from down around that area, looking at the decision that I had to make, you don’t get that many opportunities to turn and be around family,” Holtz said.
South Florida is in the Big East Conference, which has BCS ties, and finished 8-5 this season. The Bulls capped off the year with a 27-3 win over Northern Illinois in the International Bowl.
Holtz made it clear that neither schools bowl affiliations nor money pushed him towards Florida, but that the chance to be closer to his family was the deciding factor.
“I have turned away and walked away from programs in the past up until this point, but the one thing that has made me accept this one is the family situation. … This has nothing to do with me not wanting to be in Greenville,” Holtz said. “I have not tried to run out of here on the first boat that came by.
“I was not looking to leave. … The things that made me say yes to this really is the family situation. You could say ‘Oh well, it’s because it’s a BCS school,’ but I have had other opportunities to go BCS and I didn’t accept them. You could say, ‘Oh well, it’s the conference that they play in,’ but I have had other opportunities to be in that conference and I haven’t taken them.”
The USF position became available on Jan. 8 when the school fired head coach Jim Leavitt for allegedly grabbing a walk-on running back by the throat and slapping him, a charge that Leavitt vehemently denies.
Leavitt has been the only coach that USF has had in the 13 years that the football program has existed. Leavitt has accumulated a 95-57 record in that time and has gone 3-2 in bowl games.
Holtz, who inherited an ECU program that was 3-20 in the previous two years before his arrival in 2005, has gone 38-27 during his tenure in Greenville.
Holtz has taken the Pirates to four straight bowl games while guiding them to back-to-back C-USA tittles.
Holtz said the terms of his new contract were being ironed out and were not finalized at the time he spoke to the media. However, the Tampa Tribune reported later on that Holtz has aggreed to a five-year, $9.1-million contract that includes a $1 million buyout clause for the first two years.
Holtz’s departure is the second hit the ECU football staff has sustained in recent times. The first came when popular defensive coordinator Greg Hudson left to become the linebackers coach at Florida State University.
No interim coach has been named yet, and the status of the rest of ECU’s coaching staff remains in limbo. Whether or not Holtz will take some of his personnel with him remains uncertain.
“At this point I don’t know the answer to a lot of those questions,” Holtz said. “I have told the officials over at South Florida that I would interview and talk to everybody that’s there and then I have to make some decisions. Are there some (Pirates’ staff) that I would like to take? Yes. But what’s going to pan out and what’s going to be the possibility of that and at what positions at this point I really don’t have an answer to that.”
East Carolina Athletic Director Terry Holland, who will address the media today, fought to keep his prized coach, but in the end he could not offer the lure of the comfort that having family close by brings.
“Terry and I have talked quite a bit about it. Terry has done everything to try and keep me here,” Holtz said. “This is not a money decision. This is not a career decision. This is something that I feel I need to do for me, for my children and my family. Like I have said, I have turned down other jobs that had a lot of the same titles this one had. What makes this one special is family.”
Holland said that Holtz would be missed.
“Skip Holtz and his family have transformed our expectations of ourselves and our athletic program while contributing to every aspect of our community,” Holland said. “They will be missed, but have provided ECU with a solid foundation for future success. It will be up to us to build on that foundation. There has never been any doubt in my mind that the Pirate Nation is the strength of our future and Coach Holtz helped increase the number of members significantly.”
ECU Chancellor Steve Ballard wished nothing but success for Holtz.
“Skip Holtz has been a great coach and a great Pirate, and we wish him and his family all the best,” Ballard said. “Skip’s success on the field is well known, but he was also an important force for the university in fund-raising, in the academic performance of student-athletes and in enhancing our relations with the Greenville community.
“We will, of course, miss Skip, and we thank him for his great work here. Now it’s time to look to the future, and I have every confidence that Terry Holland will quickly find a new head coach who will keep our momentum going.”
Holtz’ sincerity in his claims that family was the deciding factor to leave ECU appeared to take some of the bite out of the shocking announcement at the players’ meeting on Thursday.
Most of the players interviewed said that emotions ranged from disappointment, to anger, to well wishes, but a majority of them said they understood his decision.
“I wish him good luck at South Florida. South Florida is going to get a good coach,” running back Norman Whitley said.
Whitley spent much of the 2009 season in Holtz’s doghouse after breaking team rules in 2008, but said that, “Once you have a good coach you don’t want to lose him … Me and Coach have had some run-ins, but I wish him the best of luck. … He had to make a family decision to be down there with his family, and who wouldn’t make that decision?”
Rising sophomore quarterback Josh Jordan, who is expected to compete for a starting position next season, said that he respected the decision by Holtz.
“He made the decision for his family and you have to respect him for that,” Jordan said. “He’s got family down there and in the end he has to make the right decision for him.”
Holland said the process of replacing Holtz has already started.
“Our search process will begin immediately,” Holland said. “We will be seeking a coach who can provide strong leadership and will be able to assemble a staff that will allow us to reach the substantial goals we have set for ourselves.”