COACH LOU HOLTZ
2008 College Football Hall of Fame Class
Lou Holtz is an expert at overcoming seemingly impossible challenges. He does this by setting his own goals and working to achieve them. His success as a football coach is legendary.
Although Holtz never inherited a winning team, he managed to turn all of them into champions within two seasons. He started out at William & Mary, moved on to North Carolina State, spent seven years at Arkansas, moved on to Minnesota, coached at Notre Dame for 11 seasons, and then at the University of South Carolina for six seasons.
Holtz was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and the University of Notre Dame dedicated a statue of him in 2008.
Coach Holtz has also authored three New York Times best sellers including “The Fighting Spirit” (which detailed his 1988 championship season at the University of Notre Dame) and a motivational book titled “Winning Every Day: The Game Plan for Success, Wins, Losses and Lessons” (a biography of his life and what he learned from his experiences and his latest book, Three Rules for Living a Good Life: A Game Plan for After Graduation).
His success as a man is just as impressive as his coaching career. From humble beginnings, Holtz has fashioned a life that inspires everyone who hears him to a greater sense of purpose and the strength to fulfill that purpose.
He served as an officer in the U.S. Army and has been married to his wife, Beth, for 58 years. They have four children and nine grandchildren.
JOHN SMOLTZ
Lead Analyst | MLB Network
John Smoltz, a 2015 National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, is an MLB Network game and studio analyst. Smoltz, who joined MLB Network in 2010, appears across MLB Network’s studio programming, including the Emmy Award-winning flagship studio show MLB Tonight and the live game series MLB Network Showcase, the kids-focused weekly interview and demonstration show Play Ball and the spring training series 30 Clubs in 30 Days.
An eight-time National League All-Star and the 1996 NL Cy Young Award winner, Smoltz was a key member of the 1995 World Series champion Atlanta Braves, and he is the only pitcher in Major League Baseball history to record at least 200 wins and 150 saves. He spent the first 20 years of his 21-year career with Atlanta before finishing with the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals in 2009.
Smoltz is known as one of the greatest postseason pitchers in MLB history with a lifetime record of 15-4 and 2.67 ERA. Smoltz holds a career 2.47 ERA in eight World Series games pitched, including 52 strikeouts in 51 innings. Smoltz has the most strikeouts in postseason history (199), the second most Postseason wins (15), and is the winner of the 1992 NLCS MVP award. His classic duel against the Minnesota Twins’ Jack Morris in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series was ranked as second greatest game of the last 50 years in MLB Network’s 2011 series, MLB’s 20 Greatest Games.
Smoltz is the recipient of the 2003 Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award, the 2005 Lou Gehrig Memorial Award, the 2005 Roberto Clemente Award and the 2007 Branch Rickey Award. The Braves retired Smoltz’s jersey, No. 29, in June 2012.
In addition to his work on MLB Network, Smoltz serves as FOX’s lead MLB game analyst, calling the World Series, postseason, All-Star Game and games throughout the regular season.
Smoltz was nominated for a Sports Emmy Award in 2017, 2018 and 2019 for Outstanding Sports Event Analyst for his work with MLB Network and FOX.