30 Seconds With Lou Holtz Lou Holtz prepared for his job as ESPN's wise and witty college football analyst by serving as a head coach at six colleges over 33 years. Holtz, now 76, drew up the plays for William & Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame and South Carolina, and compiled a career record of 249-132-7. In 1988, his Notre Dame team, the consensus national champion, went 12-0 and won the Fiesta Bowl. Holtz was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008. Holtz also coached the Jets in 1976. Q. Is there now more or less parity among college teams and conferences? A. You still have the great teams in each conferences, but now more teams are capable of beating them because of the quality of quarterbacks and the spread system. Q. Which teams do you like as opponents in the national title game? A. I like Oregon versus Ohio State. I think all teams in the SEC will have a loss. The conference is too tough. Alabama won the last two championships with one loss. I believe there will be two undefeated teams. Could be Stanford, Clemson, Florida State. Q. What did you make of the half-game penalty on Johnny Manziel? A. If he did nothing wrong, he should have received no penalty. If he did, he should have received much more than half a game. Look at what [Terrelle] Pryor at Ohio State or Dez Bryant received. Q. Are you happy to see the Bowl Championship Series being dissolved? A. Yes, although they have gotten the two best teams to play for the championship. There are always at least four teams that deserve to be there. Q. Did you favor the playoff system when you coached? Do you now? A. Yes. Too many people vote on the team rankings that don't see all the great teams play, and their regional bias plays a factor. They tend to favor the teams they follow or see and write about. Not intentional bias, but normal. I would like to see four teams picked after the bowl games, not before. Then you would have an eight-team playoff. Q. Are too many games on television? If people didn't watch, they wouldn't be on TV. Let the market decide. Q. Should ESPN, and not the colleges, be paying football players with the enormous profit from televising their games? A. Absolutely not. Our contracts are with the conferences or schools, not the athletes. One percent go on to play in the N.F.L. They are students who play athletics. They want to be paid, go work for Walmart. I don't have time to tell you how strongly I feel about this.