New Orleans Saints stars join 2011 Louisiana Hall of Fame class

New Orleans Saints stars Morten Andersen, Vaughn Johnson and Buford Jordan, along with LSU All-American and 12-year major league baseball infielder Todd Walker and NBA standout Donald “Slick” Watts, are among the eight 2011 inductees who will enter the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

High school football coaching great Don Shows, Louisiana-Lafayette softball All-America pitcher Kyla Hall and innovative LSU Athletic Director Thomas P. “Skipper” Heard complete the induction class.

They will be officially enshrined here June 25, 2011 to culminate the June 23-25 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Induction Celebration. Heard, who died in 1980, will be honored posthumously.

A 30-member Louisiana Sports Writers Association committee selected the 2011 inductees. The panel considered 138 nominees from 22 different sport categories on a 26-page ballot.

The inductions will be conducted in the shadow of construction of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame museum, operated by the Louisiana State Museum system in a partnership with the LSWA. The steel beam framework of the two-story, 27,500-square foot structure is up facing Cane River Lake in the National Historic Landmark District of Natchitoches.

The museum could be ready for its grand opening as early as the June 2012 Hall of Fame Induction Celebration.

The eight new inductees will raise the total of Hall of Fame members to 285 men and women honored since the first induction class — baseball’s Mel Ott, world champion boxer Tony Canzoneri and LSU football great Gaynell Tinsley — were enshrined in 1959 after their election a year earlier.

The Hall includes nine members of the Basketball Hall of Fame, six of the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players, six baseball Hall of Fame inductees, 13 Pro Football Hall of Fame members, seven Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinees, 18 Olympic medalists (10 gold medal winners), 32 College Football Hall of Fame members, three National High School Hall of Fame enshrines, jockeys with a combined 12 Triple Crown victories, six world boxing champions, three College Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, three NBA Finals MVPs and two Super Bowl MVPs.

The 2011 Induction Celebration will kick off Thursday, June 23, with the La Capitol press conference and reception. It includes three receptions, a Friday afternoon celebrity pro-am golf scramble at Oak Wing Golf Course in Alexandria, and a Saturday morning youth sports clinic hosted on the Northwestern State campus. Tickets for the induction ceremonies and dinner, and golf entries, will go on sale in April through the www.lasportshall.com website, said Hall of Fame chairman Doug Ireland.

Also to be honored at the event will be the winner of the 2011 Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award and the recipient of the 2011 Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism presented by the LSWA. Those award recipients will be announced in the spring.

ESPN and Yahoo Predictions for NFL Week 14

Another week of NFL games have passed. As we come closer to the final two teams who will be battling for the much awaited Super Bowl 2011 next year in Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the fight becomes intense for both the NFC and AFC Conference Divisions.

Last week’s NFL gave another chance for NFL teams to remain on top of their respective rankings. Defending Super Bowl champions New Orleans Saints defeated Cincinnati Bengals at 34-30. They are currently one of the top contenders for the NFC South Division with a current NFL standing of 9-3. New England Partiots who is currently sitting at the top of NFL power rankings defeated Detroit Lions on week 12 in an outstanding score of 45-24. In the recently held week 13 games, they went victorious again upon defeating New York Jets in another outstanding score of 45-3.

NFL Week 14 has already started with the Thursday Night Football Game between Indianapolis Colts vs. Tennessee Titans where Colts emerged as the winner at a score of 30-28. Once again, we surveyed both the sports analysts of ESPN and Yahoo Sports for their NFL week 14 picks and predictions to know which teams of the remaining NFL week 14 games would have the possibility to win. Usually, both sites show the same picks and predictions for each of the matches. However, in some of the games, they differ. It would be interesting to find out which particular NFL match do they have a difference.

Without further ado, below is the remaining NFL week 14 games along with the picks and predictions of both ESPN and Yahoo Sports:

Cleveland Browns vs. Buffalo Bills
NFL Pick: Browns

Greenbay Packers vs. Detroit Lions
NFL Pick: Packers

New York Giants vs. Minnessota Vikings
NFL Pick: Giants

Cincinnati Bengals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers
NFL Pick: Steelers

Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Washington Redskins
NFL Pick: Buccaneers

Atlanta Falcons vs. Carolina Panthers
NFL Pick: Falcons

Oakland Raiders vs. Jacksonville Jaguars
NFL Pick: Jaguars

St. Louis Rams vs. New Orleans Saints
NFL Pick: Saints

Seattle Seahawks vs. San Francisco 49ers
ESPN NFL Pick: 49ers
Yahoo Sports NFL Pick: Seahawks

New England Patriots vs. Chicago Bears
NFL Pick: Patriots

Miami Dolphins vs. New York Jets
NFL Pick: Jets

Denver Broncos vs. Arizona Cardinals
NFL Pick: Broncos

Kansas City Chiefs vs. San Diego Chargers
NFL Pick: Chargers

Philadelphia Eagles vs. Dallas Cowboys
NFL Pick: Eagles

Baltimore Ravens vs. Houston Texans
NFL Pick: Ravens

The NFL week 14 picks and predictions of both ESPN and Yahoo Sports differ only on the match between Seattle Seahawks vs. San Francisco 49ers.

New Orleans Saints Super Bowl license plates selling briskly

The sale of the special Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints license tags were brisk Wednesday but Who Dats did not exhaust the stock of 4,400 available on the first day of sales.

Michelle Rayburn, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Motor Vehicles, said late Wednesday that 121 Saints license plates had been processed at the agency's Metairie office on Airline Drive and 145 were sold at the headquarters office in Baton Rouge.

Rayburn said complete first-day sales of the Saints plate will not be known until all offices around the state that received the tags check in Thursday morning.