Lou Holtz’s Last Game Opens South Bend’s New Sports Film Festival

Every Notre Dame fan has a Lou Holtz moment. A sideline tirade, a one-liner at a pep rally, a speech somebody’s dad still quotes at the dinner table. Since we said goodbye to Coach this spring, those moments have felt even more precious — and harder to hold onto.

So it meant something that South Bend’s newest festival opened by putting one of those moments back on a big screen. In “Lou Holtz’s last game hits the big screen”, published in ABC57 News on October 22, 2026, reporter Pareese Payton covers opening night of the inaugural Dynasty Sports Film Festival at Bendix Arena inside the Century Center.

It left me wondering: what does it take to keep a legend like Holtz alive for the next generation of fans?

Lou Holtz’s last game, one more time in Tokyo

The opening-night film was Lou Holtz: 60 Minutes to Play and a Lifetime to Remember, directed by Notre Dame film professor Ted Mandell. It follows Holtz in July 2009, when he came out of retirement to coach a team of Notre Dame alumni against Japan’s national team at the Tokyo Dome.

Former Irish running back Reggie Brooks, who coached the running backs on that trip, told the crowd the film brought that week rushing back — and that sports are as much about community as the games themselves. Mandell compared filming Holtz up close to walking into the lion’s cage at Potawatomi Zoo with a camera. Anyone who ever watched Coach work a sideline knows exactly what he meant.

Before the screening, guests mingled with former players and the filmmaker in the Century Center lobby among Notre Dame artwork, and a Q&A with Mandell, Brooks, Chris Zorich and Kris Haines was set to follow.

Why South Bend

Festival co-founder Marissa Hill said the idea came to her during IDEA Week in South Bend last year. She fell for the city’s charm, noticed that sports stories tend to get lost at the big film festivals, and pointed to South Bend’s ties to films like Rudy and Hoosiers. The festival runs through Sunday, October 25.

Mandell said he hopes the film works as a time capsule, and that may be the best answer to my question. Legends stay alive when the people who were there tell the stories — on film, in a lobby full of old teammates, or around a tailgate. If you want more Holtz, here is how we honored Coach Lou Holtz this spring, and the line of his that says it all: For Those Who Know Notre Dame.

What’s your Lou Holtz moment? Share it in the comments — we’d love to help preserve it.

Read the original: Lou Holtz’s last game hits the big screen (ABC57)