USF Football: Skip Holtz Pursued By Arkansas?

Now that the Arkansas Razorbacks head coaching job is open after the firing of Bobby Petrino, one of the names that has been floated as a possible replacement is South Florida Bulls head coach Skip Holtz. Holtz has only coached the Bulls for two years, going 13-12 in that span.

Holtz's father, Lou Holtz, coached the Razorbacks from 1977-83, going 60-21-2 in those seasons and reaching six bowl games while Skip went to school in Fayetteville from middle school through his high school graduation. So going back to a place where he spent considerable time as a kid as well as getting a pay raise for coaching in the SEC does seem rather tempting.

In addition to that, while Holtz was the head coach of East Carolina, he something interesting about Arkansas ahead of a matchup with the Razorbacks ahead of the Liberty Bowl in 2010, before he took the job at South Florida.

Being a kid, growing up as an Arkansas fan and now having to coach against them, this is when it hit me. I feel like I should be sitting on that side because ... from seventh grade all the way up through high school, I grew up in Fayetteville.

Holtz however has deflected that speculation saying that he would like to focus on improving the Bulls for this fall.

I have not talked to anybody from Arkansas. We've been through this drill. It's flattering your name is floating around, but right now we have a job to do here. We're in the middle of spring ball and I don't want any distractions with his team as we're building this thing.

But as anyone knows from college football, just because someone has denied any kind of speculation doesn't mean that the issue is dead.