Three Rules for Living a Good Life: A Game Plan for after Graduation

Winner of a 2020 Catholic Press Association book award (first place, spirituality-hardcover).


Legendary former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz shared three easy to remember and impossible to forget rules for life during a commencement address at Franciscan University Steubenville.

• Do what is right.
• Do everything to the best of your ability.
• Show people you care.

Now expanded into book form, Three Rules for Living a Good Life: A Game Plan for after Graduation offers a quick, sometimes humorous, and always practical formula for recent college graduates and other young adults to reach success in their business, personal, and spiritual lives.

Three Rules for Living a Good Life is a great gift book for a young adult looking for a quick read that offers encouragement and concrete advice for transitioning to the workforce and to deeper, more committed relationships.

Lou Holtz, one of the most successful college football coaches of all time, a college football analyst, and a premier motivational speaker, shares a message that is genuine and sensible. Punctuated with examples for keeping and living the rules each day from his years of working with teams, in business, and with his family, Holtz’s book keeps the discussion light, humorous, and real.

Holtz’s commencement message is one he often shares with business leaders around the world. He points to the foundation of his Christian faith and the necessity for young adults who have been raised in the faith to take stock of themselves at this crossroads of their life. “Don’t ignore God! Don’t give up the faith!” he writes.

A sought-after motivational speaker, Holtz annually gives hundreds of presentations on topics having to do with leadership, success, and achieving peak results. Holtz has also given many commencement addresses and been awarded a number of honorary degrees. In Three Rules for Living a Good Life, this iconic Notre Dame football coach and television and radio analyst sums up his essential graduation message that college grads will find useful as they take their places in the “real world.”

Lou Holtz is a Hall of Fame college football coach who served as the head football coach at the University of Notre Dame from 1985 to 1996, leading the Fighting Irish to the consensus national championship in 1988.

He is also a popular motivational speaker and an author of several books, including the New York Times bestselling The Fighting Spirit about Notre Dame’s 1988 championship season, his autobiography Wins, Losses, and Lessons, A Teen’s Game Plan for Life, and Three Rules for Living a Good Life. After leaving coaching, Holtz became a college football analyst for ESPN until retiring in 2015.

Holtz has received numerous honorary doctorate degrees and has received a number of honors not only for coaching but also for his philanthropy. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008.

Holtz and his late wife, Beth, have four grown children, nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He lives in Orlando, Florida.