ESPN college football final Lou Holtz Credit: ESPN
By Matt Yoder on

Lou Holtz passed away on Wednesday at the age of 89, and the sports world paid tribute to one of the most charismatic figures that the coaching world had ever seen. For as much as the sports world will remember him for winning a national championship and his years of success at Notre Dame, he was much more than a football coach, with his vibrant personality and unique ability to inspire others.

It was only natural that, after his coaching career ended, Holtz would transition to television. But in his many years at ESPN, he found a very unique role on a show that would stand the test of time. And even though we may not have fully appreciated it at the time, it had a huge influence on how we consume and think about the sport in the future.

The show was ESPN’s College Football Final, where Holtz was paired with his longtime on-air partner and adversary, Mark May, with Rece Davis as host.

After Holtz’s passing, many college football media members and fans took to social media to remember the show and how it was appointment viewing after a long day of college football.

We tend to remember things a bit more fondly in retrospect than we did in the moment. College Football Final was never going to win any Emmys because of its high-quality production or insights. In fact, some sports media pundits even wrote that the entire show should be thrown out and rebooted because of how ridiculous and over-the-top it was.

But time heals most things, and maybe now is the time to admit that was also the fun of it.

The dynamic between Lou Holtz and Mark May would make you smile and laugh one minute and want to throw something against the wall the next. In an era when debate-driven television has led sports talk and pretty much everything else in modern media into some unhealthy places, here was a show that used a literal courtroom scene to debate college football topics. It was absurd, but maybe it deserved more credit for leaning in and embracing that, rather than pretending to be taken too seriously. Because in many ways, it was also a sign of what was to come in college football.

There are no more passionate fans in this country than college football fans. And in recent years, the sport has embraced its “sicko” culture. From the Sickos Committee to Barstool Sports to Pat McAfee becoming the star of College GameDay, the sport has gone all in on the fun, games, debates, weirdness, and tribalism that make it truly unique.

Lou Holtz and Mark May embraced who they were and their biases and played them up instead of trying to cover it up. Holtz was always touting the Fighting Irish. Mark May was always bashing Ohio State. (Which is all the more ironic that one of Holtz’s final acts was a public feud with Buckeyes coach Ryan Day.) And the two would go back and forth and tear into each other with Rece Davis trying to maintain order, wearing a judge’s robe. Podiums were thrown, insults were made, and arguments went haywire.

Whether you hated it or you loved it, you watched it if you were a college football fan.

It’s also worth pointing out that ESPN’s College Football Final was appointment viewing for fans, especially hardcore college football diehards. This was before the days when games were regularly played at 10 p.m. ET in the Pac-12 After Dark window and so this was the place to go in order to get caught up on everything that happened on Saturday. The industry hadn’t fully given up on highlights just yet, as social media was just starting to move towards its dominant perch in the cultural landscape. And along with the Final Verdict segment, the trio would close the show with their Helmet Stickers to honor the best performances of the day.

In 2026, we don’t really have anything that can recapture the same presence and purpose to make us feel like we have a true home for all of college football fandom to join together in one place, because the landscape has been so fractured. Big Ten, SEC, and ACC fans all have their own network to watch. ESPN has the SEC and ACC contracts, while the Big Ten is split between three other networks. And if you’re a fan of a certain team or a certain conference, you can comfortably silo yourself in a place where you can be spoonfed what you want. Nowadays, there is always chatter and skepticism about which personalities or which networks may or may not have ulterior motives for agendas that they may or may not be pushing. And the arguments that once were just for made-for-TV debates have now become enormous campaigns with millions and millions of dollars at stake between conferences, networks, and power brokers throughout the sport.

College football is at a crossroads in 2026, facing an existential crisis amid realignment, transfer portals, NIL, recruiting, television contracts, and everything else that makes governing the sport truly impossible. The sport seems to be at a vastly different place than it was just ten years ago, now with dozens of power brokers descending on Washington, D.C. to try to find a way out of the quagmire, with little hope that it can actually be done.

Perhaps that is why the charm and legacy of Lou Holtz have seen such an outpouring of support and remembrance, as someone who represented a time when college football was all about the passion, not so much about the politics.

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