Lou Holtz's Mathematical Problem

NC State professor of mathematics Robert Ramsay

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This story was originally published in the Greensboro News & Record prior to Lou Holtz's first game at South Carolina, which was against Carter-Finley Stadium on Sept. 4, 1999.

It has been updated at the end to reflect Ramsay's retirement in 2004 and death in 2016 at the age of 75.

By Tim Peeler
© Landmark Communications, 1999

 RALEIGH — This just might drive Lou Holtz to the end of that thin thread by which his sanity hangs: Dr. Robert Ramsay briefly considered lacing up his running shoes for the first time since bad hips forced him to quit jogging five years ago.

"I probably won’t go jog up and down the sidelines in front of him during the game," Ramsay says. "But I have thought about it."

NC State diehards who remember the unprecedented success Holtz had during a four-year stay in Raleigh will have no trouble remembering Ramsay, the mathematics professor Holtz accused of being a spy for Maryland’s Jerry Claiborne.

Ramsay, just in from the dentist office, was out for his daily jog around the track encircling N.C. State’s football practice field when Holtz, a lottery pick in the control freak draft during his younger days, ordered him and the other people milling around the field to leave.

"I was kind of pissed off and I didn’t want to leave," said Ramsay, who usually did his four laps around the track during lunch. "I had just been to the dentist and I was running later than I normally did."

Ramsay told the coach he would have to have him arrested to get him to leave. That’s exactly what Holtz did, calling in a campus security officer to handcuff the professor and take him away. Ramsay was charged with "resisting , delaying and obstructing a public officer  while the officer was attempting to discharge his duty."

None of the players who were that that afternoon thought it was such a big deal.

"We all stood there and watched the whole thing with wide eyes as the campus security cops came down and tried to get the guy to leave," said Johnny Evans, the Wolfpack Radio Network color commentator who was a sophomore quarterback at the time. "It didn’t completely surprise us. He completely believed that the guy could be a spy and he wanted to get him removed. It was just another example of how intense Coach Holtz was."

Ramsay was pardoned by NC State's interim chancellor Jackson A. Rigney a day before Wolfpack played Maryland, but the Wake County district attorney told Rigney he had no authority to do so, which kept the incident in the news for more than a month. The charges were eventually dismissed, Ramsay was censured by the NC State faculty senate and forced to write a letter of apology to the officer involved.

"It wasn’t much fun," Ramsay says. "In retrospect it’s kind of funny, but at the time, it was nerve-wracking."

The distraction didn’t help either: State lost the game 37-22 to the Terrapins.

For Holtz, the incident was just another brick in the foundation of his eccentric coaching success. The clipboard-throwing, facemask pulling coach admits that he ``might have over-reacted’’ and that he has mellowed out since then.

"I am more patient, I am not out to prove anything or make any statement," Holtz said when asked how he’s changed from his N.C. State days to now. "I would over-react so many times. I still over-react, but not as much."

Asked if he was talking about the Ramsay incident, Holtz just laughed.

"That’s one of the things I was thinking of, but I wasn’t naive enough to bring it up," Holtz said. "Some things you don’t bring up."

Ramsay, in his 33rd year as an associate professor in the university's math department, is still accused of running Holtz off from NC State. Two months after the incident, Holtz accepted a job coaching the NFL’s Jets, though he never cited the runner run-in as a reason he left.

Ramsay, 59, has saved some of the hate mail he received back then, and his mother still keeps a scrapbook of clippings from the incident, which got national attention at the time. He was in newspapers from coast to coast and even had friends in foreign countries send him clippings.

Until Holtz took the job at South Carolina, it would probably have remained a forgotten incident from a bygone era.

"Every once in a while someone will bring it up, but very few of my students know anything about it," Ramsay says. "I don’t jog anymore, so I don’t go down to the track. But I do go to the gym every once in a while and sometimes people will remind me of it down there.

"Mostly, it’s forgotten, thankfully."

Ramsay never got an apology from Holtz, though a colleague did get the coach to autograph a picture as a going away present when Ramsay went on sabbatical to Stanford a several years ago.

"If I knew you were going to leave NC State,’’ Holtz jokingly wrote on the picture, ``I would have stayed."

Ramsay probably won’t get a chance to see the coach one more time this weekend. He doesn’t plan on going to the game.

Or practice, either.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ramsay retired from his faculty position in 2004, the same year Holtz retired from coaching. He died in 2016 at the age of 75.