President Trump announced that he will award famed football coach Lou Holtz the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one week after Holtz gave Trump a glowing endorsement at the Republican National Convention.
The medal is the nation’s highest civilian honor.
“I’ve known him for a long time, he’s been a friend of mine, and I think I’ve received letters from every football coach, almost in the nation — that’s a little exaggeration, but some of the greats,” Trump said of letters attesting to Holtz’s credentials during a news conference at the White House on Friday. “Nick Saban wrote a letter … Urban Meyer wrote a beautiful letter, and so many of the other great, legendary coaches. Not only coaches though, people in sports and people in life, and even great political people recommending Lou for the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” said Trump during a White House news conference also attended by Holtz.
Trump, who called Holtz an “incredible leader,” said to him, “You probably know half of the people in the room. I’ll bet they treat you better than they treat me. They treat him good — wouldn’t treat me that way.”
“When a leader tells you something, you’ve got to be able to count on it,” Holtz said during the convention. “That’s President Trump. He says what he means, he means what he says, and he’s done what he said he would do at every single turn.”
The former Notre Dame college football coach earned a rebuke from the school after he called Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “a Catholic in name only” in his remarks.
Holtz, who has also coached at the University of South Carolina, North Carolina State University, and others, has pushed to restart college football this fall, saying “risk is part of life.”
Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three-time Olympian and University of Kansas track & field champion Jim Ryun in July.
