On the evening of January 18, 1989, future Hall of Fame football coach Lou Holtz and his Notre Dame team had just left the White House after winning their 11th National Championship title.
Hours later, Holtz would learn that one of his players had died, and it left a lasting impression on the legendary coach that resonates with him to this day.
"We're at the White House ... because we won the national championship," recalled Holtz on Fox Nation's "Deep Dive." "We come back and ... I'm awakened at midnight. [Somebody] tells me that Bobby Satterfield died of a general heart defect that night.
"We had a team meeting [at] 7:30 before classes start -- when I told them that Bobby Satterfield died last night. One player passed out, almost every player in that room shed real tears," he remembered.
"You couldn't tell if Bobby Satterfield was white or black, offense, defense, first-team, third-team, scholarship, walk-on, East Coast, West Coast. What you could tell -- they lost a teammate," said Holtz.
"There were tears by all of us,'' the Chicago Tribune quoted Holtz as saying at the time. ''The outpouring of love for Bobby Satterfield on this campus is tremendous."
Satterfield was reportedly at a bar with teammates when he suddenly collapsed after 2 a.m. University physician James Moriarty said that an autopsy revealed the death was not related to drug or alcohol use.
"Bobby Satterfield was a black defensive black from Los Angeles. Third-team walk on. He wasn't a great player but he was part of the team. That's why teams are great because they care about one another," Holtz told Fox Nation.
"The only friends you have in this world are the friends you eat with, sleep with, bleed with, pray with, cry with -- that's your family and your teammates and nobody else."
Reflecting on the upcoming national championship game between the LSU Tigers and the Clemson Tigers, Holtz said that all top teams share that common bond.
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"Any great organization, any great family, any great football team, including LSU and Clemson, there's going to be a love," the onetime coach said. "It will be a feeling. It's going to be caring. And on our football team, that's all we tried to do was develop a trust, commitment and love and put it with good fundamentals."
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