Each year when the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame announces the next summer’s induction class, there’s nearly unanimous agreement – and where these days do you ever find that?
“It’s a great class,” people say. People like you and me. People like Archie Manning and other LSHOF members, including the recently inducted Danny Broussard, who ranks sixth in the country in career high school boys basketball coaching wins. Both said so Wednesday.
People from far away who don’t realize what talent we have in sports in this state, until somebody they know or cheered for is in the induction class and they take notice.
Louisiana takes a back seat to no place when it comes to jazz, zydeco, humidity, gumbo, etouffee, jambalaya … and sports studs.
The Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s LSHOF selection committee has 35 members from around the Boot – well, sadly, 34 after retired prep sportswriting legend Bill Bumgarner of New Orleans passed away suddenly on Sunday, gardening with his son and daughter-in-law, after taking his son and grandson to the Saints game.
The man we all knew and loved as “Bummer” was the first scribe in the state, and one of the first in the South, to cover football recruiting. He could tell you about a prospect at Bastrop, Basile or Barbe, at Northwood or Northwood-Lena, at Woodlawn (here) and Woodlawn there (in Baton Rouge), and OMG, when it came to prep football’s fabled Catholic League in New Orleans, Bummer knew about the backups who were gonna be stars.
Bummer loved, loved, loved voting each August to select the following year’s induction class. He was in the middle of discussions about the next year’s elections while occupying press boxes and press rooms and burning up the phone lines with pals from all around.
He was one of only a couple charter members of the selection committee, formed in 1982, still involved in the process. And he was excited about the latest selections, chosen during a five-hour meeting Aug. 23 in Pineville. That ended three weeks of deliberations, beginning with online voting that pared down 153 nominees from 27 different sport categories (from the obvious ones to lacrosse, rodeo, sailing, shooting, women’s boxing, weightlifting, and even chess) to 61 finalists.
Only nine, by rule, could be chosen. The LSWA honors the words of one of the forefathers, Otis Harris, sports editor of the Shreveport Journal.
The LSWA, and the Hall of Fame, were established in 1958. Discussion among state sportswriters began in the years after World War II, as they tried to figure out how to share high school football and basketball scores, and more effectively pick All-State teams. Those conversations hatched an idea. Wrote Harris:
“An organization with a membership so exclusive that nobody may immediately qualify to be tapped will open for business this weekend as a going concern,” said his Dec. 11, 1950 Journal column. “It is the Louisiana Hall of Fame – a hall of fame for the state’s greatest athletes, men or women, amateur or professional, living or dead.”
Turned out Harris was ahead of everybody else, and it didn’t come together for eight years. But his perspective was on point from the day he handed sheets of the column to the typesetter.
“The purpose is to make the hall of fame mean something and limit the roll to athletes, past or present, who have become figures of national or international renown in the general sports pattern. Only the state’s immortals in the sphere of athletes will be enshrined.”
The first three inductees – baseball great Mel Ott, LSU football All-American Gaynell Tinsley (from Homer) and champion boxer Tony Canzoneri – were inducted in 1959 at the Ark-La-Tex Sports Award Banquet in Shreveport.
Over the years, as a total of 503 people have been enshrined, a lot more stars haven’t gotten selected.
Many of the 144 not chosen for the Class of 2026 are accomplished enough to belong. Probably every one of the 61 finalists would fit fine in the Hall, but as new nominees emerge each year, most of those left outside will never get inside.
For example, for the 2027 ballot, strong candidates who will be eligible for the first time will include Patrick Peterson (football), Ryan Harrison (Shreveport’s own pro tennis great), and Leonard Fournette (football). The 2026 newbies left waiting included Mark Ingram, Jarvis Landry and Ed Orgeron – and that’s just the football guys.
It’s not easy whittling down the nominees to the inductees. That makes Wednesday’s announcement worthy of celebrating the nine who have earned an invitation to Natchitoches on the last weekend of June next year.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com