SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The lies George O'Leary lived for 21 years unraveled in a span of about 30 hours, leaving him jobless and Notre Dame embarrassed and without a coach.

Holtz on the list?

Notre Dame will not only revisit its original list of head coaching candidates, but it will also take a look at former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz, WGN Radio in Chicago reported Sunday. According to WGN, with regard to Holtz re-joining the Irish, "there is interest on both sides." Holtz is currently head coach at South Carolina. Regis Philbin jumped on the bandwagon Monday on his morning TV show "Live With Regis And Kelly", endorsing Holtz for the Notre Dame job. Check out ESPN.com's rundown of possible candidates to replace O'Leary at Notre Dame.

It began 6 p.m. Wednesday with a question about O'Leary's playing career at New Hampshire and ended shortly before midnight Thursday, hours after O'Leary admitted to Notre Dame that he had made up the master's degree in education from New York University included in his biographical sketch.

"It was a very disappointing and sad set of events," Louis M. Nanni, vice president of public affairs and communication, said Sunday.

Notre Dame's sports information office got a call Wednesday from The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., about a story on the new Notre Dame football coach, whose biographical sketch said that he had earned three letters as a UNH football player.

The Union Leader interviewed the man who was New Hampshire football coach at the time, an assistant and some players, and none of them remembered O'Leary playing in a game, much less earning three letters.

John Heisler, a Notre Dame associate athletic director, interrupted a meeting O'Leary was in about 6 p.m. Wednesday and asked him about his playing days. O'Leary admitted he had not earned three letters. In fact, he said he had attended New Hampshire only two years and had not played in any games because he had mononucleosis the first year and a knee injury the second.

O'Leary said someone must have made a mistake along the way in his biographical sketch and he never noticed.

White: 'I dropped the ball'

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White takes the blame for the hiring fiasco that led George O'Leary to resign after just five days as the Irish football coach. "I dropped the ball on this one," White, speaking publicly for the first time since the resignation late Thursday, said on his radio show Sunday night. "It's been the most challenging, difficult time, in not my professional career, but in my life. I feel very responsible for not making this thing work better. That's all on me." White said Notre Dame officials talked to more than 50 people about O'Leary, including coaches he had worked for more than 20 years ago, and found nothing to cause anyone to question O'Leary's past. "I think everybody that has been part of George's life was just in shock that he had some of this erroneous bio material that dated back 20 to 25 to 30 years ago," White said on his program, which airs on ESPN Radio 1000. White has come under heavy criticism from students and alumni, with some saying they believe White should resign because of the error. White said he never considered resigning and said he has the support of the Rev. Edward A. "Monk" Malloy, the university president. "Monk has been very, very supportive," he said. Louis M. Nanni, vice president of public affairs and communication, said the university still has confidence in White. "We know that obviously he has taken a lot of heat at this moment," Nanni said. "So goes the job of being the athletic director at Notre Dame, especially when it pertains to something going wrong in the football arena." White also said that while a lot of people are worried about what the incident has meant for Notre Dame, he feels most for O'Leary. He said he talked to O'Leary on the telephone about midnight Thursday when he resigned. "It was the toughest phone call I've ever been party to," he said. White said a Notre Dame staff member was with O'Leary on Thursday when it became apparent he would have to resign. "He said, 'Oh my gosh, how do I tell my mother?"' White said. "The person who has been hit the hardest, and the people who have been hit the hardest, are clearly the O'Leary family."

"Frankly, at this point I didn't have the sense that it was a big deal," Heisler said. "This was not something that anybody was too concerned about."

The Union Leader pressed on, however, and got a copy of a handwritten personal information form still on record at Syracuse, where O'Leary got his first assistant coach's job in 1980.

The Union Leader again contacted Notre Dame, this time asking Nanni for a response. Nanni reached O'Leary, who was in New Jersey on a recruiting trip. He asked O'Leary if he had filled out the sheet that said he was a three-time letter winner at New Hampshire.

"He said, 'Geez, it was 22 years ago. I'm not certain if I filled it out. But if they have it, I probably did."'

O'Leary immediately offered to resign, but university officials told him they did not accept.

"We said, 'No, we'll weather this storm, we'll stick together,"' Nanni said.

Nanni said he and others began working on a statement from O'Leary expressing remorse for the action, along with a statement of support from athletic director Kevin White.

"It was going to express regret as well, but we were going to move forward," Nanni said.

Nanni said it was at this point that he asked O'Leary if there was anything else in his background that Notre Dame officials would be surprised by.

"He kind of cryptically talked about a few different things. I then asked him if they were to look at his records with his master's degree at NYU, would it be fair to say they're not going to find your name there? He said, 'Yeah, that would be fair to say that."

That's when Nanni decided to get together a group of Notre Dame administrators, including White and the Rev. Edward A. Malloy, the university president.

"We talked it through and looking at the details of the things we felt there was just a breach of trust there," Nanni said. "George offered to resign five or six times during the course of that afternoon and evening. Finally late that evening we decided to accept it. He faxed over a statement around 12:30."

O'Leary flew back to South Bend early Friday morning, picked up the few things he had put in his office and took the Notre Dame private plane back to Atlanta.

About 9:15 a.m., the university sent a copy of a news release announcing O'Leary's resignation to trustees, university officers and faculty board members. The release was sent to the media about 15 minutes later.

Nanni said what made the revelation especially surprising was the fact that everything university officials had heard in interviewing about 50 people about O'Leary was that he was honest and a man of integrity.

"Even after the story broke, we heard the same things," Nanni said.

Despite some statements by students and alumni that White is to blame, Nanni said the university still has confidence in him.

"We know that obviously he has taken a lot of heat at this moment," Nanni said. "So goes the job of being the athletic director at Notre Dame, especially when it pertains to something going wrong in the football arena."

Nanni also said the hiring fiasco also has hurt Notre Dame's credibility, at least in the short term.

"In the long run, that remains to be seen," he said. "If we hire the right coach who is the right fit and comes and restores this program to national prominence, people are going to say in retrospect, 'This was divine providence at work.' So a lot certainly rests on the next hire."