The legendary Notre Dame head coach, Lou Holtz, may no longer be with us right now. But his impact across the college football realm is unparalleled; just ask Tim Grunhard about it. If it wasn’t for that one phone call during the holiday season of 1985, Kansas City wouldn’t have had one of its more talented linemen.

On March 6, CBS Sports’ Tom Lemming shared a beautiful old clip as a form of tribute, of him playfully getting roasted for recruiting hype and style in his signature funny way. While that clip was hitting the corners of the Internet, Grunhard dropped a beautiful tribute for making a career out of nothing for him.

“If it weren’t for Coach Holtz, Tom, as you know I would never have played for the Irish!” he said on his X handle before doubling down with a request for the ‘Holtz’s Heroes foundation’: “lol … too long of a story but might be the only D1 player ever to get an offer at @Walgreens while mopping a floor at closing time!”

This story is as good as it gets. Tim was just a regular guy and the son of a Chicago policeman. At the time, he was working a holiday shift at a local Walgreens. Grunhard was a huge fan of the Fighting Irish, and playing in the blue and gold had always been a dream. However, he was practically a nobody at the time of his recruitment. Plus, Holtz’s predecessor at Notre Dame, Gerry Faust, had completely passed on him because Tim didn’t fit the ‘mold’ of what they thought a lineman should look like.

So, Grunhard was just clocking in at the pharmacy, probably thinking his big football dreams were over, until his manager came over and said, “Hey, you’ve got a call from some guy who says he’s Coach Holtz”. Like any sane human being, Tim thought it was a prank. At that time, Lou Holtz was the coach at Minnesota. However, Grunhard’s dream really had come true. At least he had a shot at achieving it.

Once the former OL  got to campus in the summer of 1986, the ‘honeymoon phase’ ended on the very first day. In their first meeting, Holtz made all the new recruits stand up. They were feeling pretty good about themselves, but Holtz looked them dead in the eye and said, “If I had one more month of recruiting, none of your a—es would’ve been here”. It was a brutal way to bring them back to reality, but it worked, especially on Grunhard.

He used that motivation to become a four-year starter and All-American. He was the main leader of that pack during the undefeated 1988 National Championship season. That run had the Kansas City Chiefs pick him in the second round of the 1990 Draft. Grunhard ended up playing 11 seasons in Kansas City, starting 120 games in a row at one point. He went from wondering “Where is Kansas City?” on draft day to becoming a Chiefs Hall of Famer. All because of one phone call from Lou Holtz.

There are many more players like Tim Grunhard, who owe a lot to the legendary coach.

Coach Lou Holtz’s careers that he saved

Take a guy like Jerome Bettis, who went from a kid in Detroit to a Hall of Famer. It was because Holtz promised his mother he’d look out for him like family. Bettis went on to become a Super Bowl champion and the NFL’s 8th all-time leading rusher. Then you’ve got Chris Zorich, who is one of the most intense guys to ever play the game. He grew up in a really tough environment without a father, and he’s been very open about how he had “no idea where he’d end up” without Holtz.

Even superstars like Tim Brown, the 1987 Heisman Trophy winner, say Holtz changed their mental switch. Before Holtz arrived at Notre Dame, the program was actually struggling. He came in and immediately stripped the names off the jerseys to prove the team was bigger than any one person. Holtz even suffered two broken punts to show Brown how to catch a punt. Holtz’s simple mantra was, “Do right, do your best, and treat others the way you want to be treated.” And boy, that paid millions in dividends for him, on and off the field.

Lou Holtz is the reason Notre Dame is a nationally relevant program today. He coached at South Bend for 10 seasons and has impacted the lives of a lot people. In his absence, all of them will continue to honor his memory and the legacy he left on the field.