THE DRIVE with MARK PANICHELLI ! On RADIOFREE ENC SKIP HOLTZ TAKES USF JOB, LEAVES ECU
South Florida will announce later Thursday that it has hired East Carolina's Skip Holtz to replace the recently fired Jim Leavitt as football coach, AOL Fanhouse is reporting.
The 45-year-old Holtz led East Carolina to two consecutive Conference USA championships and 38 victories in four seasons. He also coached at Connecticut in the 1990s in the years before UConn became a Division I-A program.
Holtz is the son of former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz, now a college football analyst at ESPN.
Leavitt was fired Jan. 8 for allegedly striking one of his players and then lying about the incident. He has hired an attorney, insisting his dismissal was unwarranted.
South Florida is standing by its findings.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Story on ESPN.com
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4825861
Bobby Allison ‘s On “The Drive” part1
Bobby Allison ‘s On “The Drive” part2
He moved to the Grand National circuit in 1965[1] and got his first victory at Oxford Plains Speedway on July 12, 1966.
During the course of his career, Bobby Allison accumulated 84 victories, making him third all-time, tied with Darrell Waltrip, including three victories at the Daytona 500 in 1978, 1982 and 1988,[1] where he finished one-two with his son, Davey Allison. He was also the NASCAR Winston Cup Champion in 1983[1] driving for DiGard Racing. Additionally, Allison ran in the Indianapolis 500 twice, with a best finish of 25th in 1975.
Allison's NASCAR team owners included DiGard, Junior Johnson & Associates, and Roger Penske, for whom Allison scored four of the five NASCAR wins for American Motors' Matador. The other AMC victory was accomplished by Mark Donohue also racing for Penske in 1973 at Riverside. Bobby also raced in NASCAR as a driver/owner of an AMC Matador.
Allison was involved in an accident at Alabama International Motor Speedway (now Talladega Superspeedway) in May, 1987 that saw his car cut down a tire, turn sideways and go airborne into the protective catch fence that separates the speedway from the grandstands. The impact with the fence with the rear of the car at over 200 miles per hour (320 km/h) caused nearly 100 yards of fencing to be torn down. Parts and pieces of the car went flying into the grandstand injuring several spectators. This is the same race that Bill Elliott set the all-time qualifying record at 212 mph (341 km/h). In response, NASCAR mandated smaller carburetors for the remaining 1987 events at Talladega and its sister track, Daytona International Speedway. The following year, NASCAR mandated restrictor plates at Daytona and Talladega to keep speeds under 200 miles per hour (320 km/h). Allison would win the first Daytona 500 run with restrictor plates in February 1988 by beating his son Davey Allison. He is the oldest driver (50 years) ever to win the Daytona 500 and the first one-two father/son finish in the Daytona 500.
Later that season, on June 19, 1988, Bobby Allison nearly died in a crash at Pocono Raceway, but was left with injuries that forced his retirement from driving in NASCAR.[1] In 1992, his youngest son, Clifford Allison, was fatally injured in a practice crash for the NASCAR Busch Series race (now Nationwide Series) at Michigan International Speedway. Allison was elected to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1993, the same year that his son Davey died following a helicopter accident at Talladega Superspeedway. He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1992.
Allison is one of eight drivers to have won what was then considered a career Grand Slam (an unofficial term) by winning the sport's four majors: the Daytona 500, Winston 500, Coca-Cola 600, and the Southern 500. Richard Petty, David Pearson, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, and Buddy Baker are the other seven to have accomplished the feat.
Courtesy of the Associated Press. Photograph by Ric Feld.
Allison Brothers Fight Cale Yarborough
Donnie (far left) and Bobby Allison (wearing helmet) fight Cale Yarborough following the Daytona 500 in February 1979 in Daytona Beach, Florida. Yarborough was involved in a wreck with Donnie Allison near the end of the race.
|
|
The Best of “The Drive” – interviews-
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Johnson graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School (now Memorial High School) in Port Arthur, where one of his classmates was future rock superstar Janis Joplin, whom Johnson nicknamed "beat weeds."
He went to college at the University of Arkansas and was a member of the 1964 National Championship football team, where he was an all-SWC defensive lineman for Hall of Fame coach Frank Broyles, and a teammate of future Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Other notable teammates were Ken Hatfield, Jim Lindsey, All-American and Ernie Davis Award Winner, Ronnie Caveness, and future Outland Trophy winner Loyd Phillips. Several future great head coaches were assistant coaches for Frank Broyles and the Razorbacks during Johnson's career in Fayetteville: Hayden Fry, future legendary Head Coach at the University of Iowa, Johnny Majors, future legendary Head Coach at the University of Tennessee, and most notably Barry Switzer, Hall of Fame coach of the University of Oklahoma and the man who replaced Jimmy Johnson as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Johnson was nick-named "Jimmy Jumpup" because he never stayed down on the ground for long during football practices or games as it was said his determination was boundless.[1]
Johnson is one of only two head coaches to win both a college football national championship and a Super Bowl. The other is Barry Switzer, his college teammate and rival head coach.[-courtesy wiki-