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Who really said it

They say a tie is like kissing your sister. I guess that is better than kissing your brother

Attributed to Lou Holtz 1937–2026 · college football coach; Notre Dame national champion, 1988
Attributed In copyright

Credited to Holtz, and unchallenged — no other page on Wikiquote gives this line to anyone else. Holtz is only claiming half of it, and says so: “They say” marks the sister comparison as a saying he inherited, and Wikipedia’s account traces that half to Navy coach Eddie Erdelatz in 1953. The topper about the brother is the part that is Holtz’s, and the only citation for it is a listicle we could not open. Widely repeated, consistent with his style, not pinned to a primary source.

Last verified 30 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“They say a tie is like kissing your sister. I guess that is better than kissing your brother” attributed to Lou Holtz; Wikiquote files it as attributed, citing only a Bleacher Report listicle, and no primary source has been read. The first sentence is older football folklore: its earliest known use is credited to Navy coach Eddie Erdelatz after a 0–0 tie with Duke on 7 November 1953.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Lou Holtz). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Lou Holtz — American college football coach · Notre Dame, 1986–1996. Theme: "They say a tie is like kissing your sister. I guess that is better than kissing your brother". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "They say a tie is like kissing your sister. I guess that is better than kissing your brother". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Wikiquote section
Attributed — the page has no sourced section
Citation offered
Ben Weiximann, “Top 15 Funniest Lou Holtz Quotes,” Bleacher Report — unreachable from here
The inherited half
“A tie is like kissing your sister” — credited to Navy’s Eddie Erdelatz, 1953
Occasion, season, opponent
Not established
Rival claimants
None — no other Wikiquote page credits either half as a quotation

“They say a tie is like kissing your sister. I guess that is better than kissing your brother.”

The words “They say” are doing real work here. Holtz is quoting a saying older than his own career and then capping it — so only the second sentence is a claim to authorship at all.

Wikiquote’s Lou Holtz page, Attributed section

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote ↗ files this line under Attributed, which is its own signal: the page has no sourced section at all, and every quotation on it carries the same kind of second-hand citation.
  • That citation is a Bleacher Report listicle, “Top 15 Funniest Lou Holtz Quotes” by Ben Weiximann. The host is unreachable from our network, so we can neither confirm what it says nor what it cites. We are not counting it as corroboration.
  • The setup is not Holtz’s and he does not claim it. Wikipedia’s article on the tie ↗ reports that the unpopularity of drawn games “is reflected in the saying, ‘A tie is like kissing your sister’” and that the earliest known use was by Navy coach Eddie Erdelatz ↗ after a scoreless tie with Duke in 1953. Its own footnote for that is an American Dialect Society list message held only in the Wayback Machine, which we could not reach — so we are reporting Wikipedia’s finding as Wikipedia’s, not as a primary confirmation.
  • The 1953 game is independently on the record: Navy’s 1953 schedule ↗ shows a 0–0 tie with Duke at Municipal Stadium in Baltimore on 7 November 1953, which is the match the attribution refers to.
  • A phrase search across the whole of English Wikiquote finds “kissing your sister” on three pages and “kissing your brother” on two; apart from Holtz, every hit is dialogue from a film or television series rather than an attribution to a person. Nobody else is claiming this line.
In copyright

We cannot name a first publication for this line, so we cannot point you at a document. What we can say is that it is not in the public domain: Holtz’s coaching and broadcasting career ran from 1969 to 2015, and everything published in the United States from 1931 onward is still under copyright protection. Treat it as in copyright and quote it as a quotation, with attribution, rather than reusing it as free text.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Who the first half belongs to

This is a joke built on a borrowed line, and Holtz flags the borrowing himself. Splitting it in two is the only honest way to answer “who said this?”

“A tie is like kissing your sister” earliest known use

Football folklore long before Holtz. Wikipedia ↗ gives the earliest known use to Navy head coach Eddie Erdelatz after a scoreless tie against Duke in 1953 — a 0–0 draw with Duke in Baltimore on 7 November 1953 ↗. Holtz’s “They say” concedes the point.

Ben Weiximann, “Top 15 Funniest Lou Holtz Quotes,” Bleacher Report documented but unverified

Wikiquote’s only citation. The host is unreachable from our network, so we cannot confirm the wording or see what the listicle itself relied on. Wikiquote’s Lou Holtz page ↗

Lou Holtz genuine, but only the second sentence

The line about kissing your brother is the part actually claimed for him, and it is the part with no primary source. Nothing contradicts it and nobody competes for it; it simply has not been documented.

Half of this joke is a 1950s coaching cliché; the other half is Holtz’s, on the word of a listicle. Wikipedia on the saying’s origin ↗

Context

Why it mattered

The sister joke was the standard American complaint about drawn games for decades, and it had a real target: college football allowed ties, and a hard-fought 0–0 counted for nothing much in anyone’s eyes. Erdelatz reached for it after exactly that kind of afternoon in Baltimore in 1953.

Holtz’s addition is a coach’s joke rather than a fan’s. It does not complain that ties are unsatisfying; it concedes the cliché and then finds something worse to compare them with.

I guess that is better than kissing your brother.

Read the full story

There is a neat piece of timing behind it. Holtz coached Notre Dame from 1986 to 1996, and the NCAA introduced overtime in college football in 1996 — eliminating ties except for severe weather or curfew. The saying he was riffing on was on its way to obsolescence in his final season on that sideline.

It is worth saying plainly what this page cannot tell you: when Holtz said it, to whom, or after which game. Wikiquote offers no occasion and the one citation it gives cannot be opened from here. What we can establish is the shape of the joke, the origin of the half he borrowed, and the fact that no one else has ever claimed the half he added.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Lou Holtzen.wikiquote.org

The attribution and its single listicle citation, in the page’s Attributed section.
Lou Holtzen.wikipedia.org

Biography: head coach at Notre Dame 1986–1996, consensus national champion 1988, ESPN analyst 2005–2015.
Tie (draw)en.wikipedia.org

Records the saying "A tie is like kissing your sister", credits its earliest known use to Eddie Erdelatz in 1953, and dates the NCAA’s introduction of overtime to 1996.
Eddie Erdelatzen.wikipedia.org

The Navy head coach (from 1950) to whom the sister saying is first credited.
1953 Navy Midshipmen football teamen.wikipedia.org

The schedule entry for the game in question: a 0–0 tie with Duke at Municipal Stadium, Baltimore, 7 November 1953.

The author

About Lou Holtz

Lou Holtz

1937–2026 · American college football coach · Notre Dame, 1986–1996

Lou Holtz was an American college football coach who took six different programmes to bowl games and finished with a career college record of 249–132–7. His 1988 Notre Dame team went 12–0 and was the consensus national champion. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008. Much of his quotable reputation rests on this kind of line — a stock coaching saying given one extra turn — which is also why so little of it is traceable to a primary source.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Wikiquote, s.v. “Lou Holtz,” Attributed section, citing Ben Weiximann, “Top 15 Funniest Lou Holtz Quotes,” Bleacher Report — unreachable from our network; no primary source read. On the borrowed setup: “Tie (Draw),” Wikipedia, which credits the earliest known use of “a tie is like kissing your sister” to Navy coach Eddie Erdelatz after the 0–0 tie with Duke of November 7, 1953.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘They say a tie is like kissing your sister. I guess that is better than kissing your brother’?” Last verified 30 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/they-say-a-tie-is-like-kissing-your-sister-i-guess-that-is/

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