One thing about Louis Leo “Lou” Holtz: If he hadn’t gone into coaching football and later analyzing it, he’d have made a fine stand-up comedian.
A select but sizable group of Arkansans was reminded of this during the Little Rock Touchdown Club’s 2014 Awards Banquet, which featured Holtz as speaker and took place Feb. 13 in the Grand Ballroom of Embassy Suites in Little Rock. Attendees enjoyed a buffet dinner of beef, chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes, salad and desserts.
Master of ceremonies David Bazzel acknowledged sponsors and special guests, which included a handful of former Razorbacks football players.
National Football League notables Cliff Harris and Willie Roaf were on hand to confer awards bearing their names.
Cornerback and NFL draft hopeful Pierre Desir of Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo., received the Harris Award. Isaac Johnson of Springdale Har-Ber High School and Travis Swanson of the University of Arkansas received Roaf awards.
Other honorees were Bijhon Jackson of El Dorado High School and Trey Flowers of the University of Arkansas, recipients of the Dan Hampton Award, and the absent Kiero Small, also with Arkansas, winner of the Paul Eells Award. Rex Nelson, radio announcer for the Ouachita Baptist University Tigers, received the “Sully” Award, named for KATV-TV, Channel 7, sports director Steve Sullivan.
A number of players were honored as recipients of the Arkansas College Player of the Year (one from each college football program in the state) and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette High School Players/ Coaches of the Year (with one high school player selected from each class, from 2A to 7A).
To say that Holtz - the former Razorbacks coach and now a commentator for ESPN - has got jokes is an understatement: “I’m so old my birthday candles cost more than the cake.”
He even waxed humorous about his wife’s successful battle with stage-four cancer: “I don’t pray for her anymore, I pray to her.”
But Holtz was all seriousness in his admonishments to the honorees … admonishments couched in the thesis statement that “life’s nothing more than making good choices.”
High Profile, Pages 45 on 02/23/2014