Lou Holtz Compares Rich Rodriguez to Hitler While Discussing Leadership
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Leave a CommentLou Holtz really only still has a job with ESPN for the entertainment value. He is hard to understand and most of what he does say is incoherent. Although most of his statements in the past have just been dumb, none have been controversial. That is, until this past Friday.
On College Football Live, Holtz was discussing Michigan’s rough start and said something about Rich Rodriguez’s leadership. He then followed it up with this line:
“Ya know, Hitler was a great leader too.”
I don’t know if Holtz was trying to be edgy or if he is just that dumb, but it’s not a good idea to compare a college football coach to Hitler. I still haven’t been able to find a video of this incident, so I can’t say for sure what the exact context of the statement was. Even so, it doesn’t really matter. Bringing up Hitler at all is a bad thing to do, but to compare a college football coach to him is just idiotic.
Michigan athletic director Bill Martin called someone at ESPN about the comment once he found out about it, and Lou Holtz apologized for what he said during halftime of the Clemson-Georgia Tech game on Saturday. Surprisingly, Holtz will not be punishment for the comment, even though ESPN.com’s Jemele Hill was suspended earlier this year for comparing rooting for the Boston Celtics to saying Hitler was a victim.
I was really hoping that this incident would finally do in Lou Holtz at ESPN. He is more than an annoyance at this point, and if I wanted a good laugh, I would watch Comedy Central, not ESPN. How he still has a job really is beyond me, other than the fact that executives must think people watch just to see what Holtz will say next. As this most recent incident has taught us, what he will say is probably going to create lots of discussion, which in the end brings attention to ESPN. They obviously must think that any publicity is good publicity.
