NATCHITOCHES, La. – The Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2025 has expanded to 12 with the announcement Wednesday that retired football coach Nick Saban, who led LSU to a 2003 national championship, will be enshrined this summer.
Saban was elected to the LSHOF’s Class of 2020, but the global pandemic that spring postponed that year’s ceremonies. It also altered the NCAA football recruiting calendar and that shift prevented Saban, then coach at Alabama, from being inducted until now at the Hall’s annual June ceremonies, set this year for June 26-28 in Natchitoches.
The announcement was made by Ronnie Rantz, CEO/President of the LSHOF Foundation which hosts the annual induction activities, and LSHOF chairman Doug Ireland. The other members of the class were announced last fall.
Saban has close connections with four other 2025 inductees – Andrew Whitworth, Herb Vincent, Glenn Guilbeau and the late Ed Daniels, all who were involved with Saban during his time at LSU.
Whitworth was a star on the Tigers’ national championship team. Vincent oversaw communications for the athletics department while Saban was at LSU. Guilbeau and Daniels covered that team and other Saban-led squads at LSU and Alabama.
Whitworth, a champion at West Monroe High School, LSU and in the NFL during a 16-year pro career, is joined by pro basketball All-Stars Danny Granger and Vickie Johnson, the state’s winningest all-time college baseball coach Joe Scheuermann and Danny Broussard, one of the nation’s most successful high school basketball coaches, in this year’s induction class.
It also includes LSU gymnastics great and NCAA individual champion April Burkholder, transformational Catholic-Baton Rouge high school football coach Dale Weiner and George “Bobby” Soileau, an NCAA boxing champion at LSU who also won a state crown as a football coach at his alma mater, Sacred Heart High School in Ville Platte.
LSU graduate Vincent, now a longstanding associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, is receiving the Hall’s Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award with his enshrinement. Daniels was a generational television sports broadcaster in New Orleans, and Guilbeau is one of the nation’s more decorated sportswriters in a career that has seen him cover LSU, state college, high school and pro sports along with stories across the South and around the SEC. They are being inducted as recipients of the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism.
The new class will be enshrined June 28 at the Natchitoches Events Center to culminate the 66th Induction Celebration. Three days and nights of festivities begin Thursday, June 26 with seven events, three with free access. More information is available at LaSportsHall.com or by calling the LSHOF Foundation office at 318-238-4255.
Saban brought the Tigers from relative mediocrity to a national championship in five years (2000-04) as head coach before departing for the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. He won seven national titles, six since 2009 with Alabama, in 28 seasons as a head college coach and carved his prominent place in state sports history with the 2003 BCS national title win by his LSU squad over Oklahoma in the Superdome.
Under Saban, the Tigers won the Southeastern Conference championship in 2001 and 2003, took the SEC West Division crowns in 2001-03, and compiled a 48-16 (28-12 SEC) record in Baton Rouge, 4-1 in bowl games. He posted a 292-71-1 (.804) mark as a college head coach before his retirement after the 2023 season. He was national coach of the year for the first time and won his first SEC coach of the year award in 2003 at LSU.
The first coach to win a national title with two different FBS schools since the inception of the AP Poll in 1936, Saban joined Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant as the only coaches to win SEC crowns at different schools. Among Saban’s coaching tree, former LSU assistants Jimbo Fisher and Kirby Smart have led their teams to national titles. He is a 2013 inductee in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and will be inducted in the College Football Hall of Fame in December 2025.
After retiring from coaching, he joined the announcing crew for ESPN’s popular College GameDay Saturday morning show for the 2024 season, and the 73-year-old TV newcomer has been nominated for a Sports Emmy Award.
The complete 12-person Class of 2025 will swell the overall membership in the Hall of Fame to 504 men and women – athletes, coaches, administrators and sports media members — honored since its founding in 1958.
Whitworth won three state titles and two national high school crowns playing for the late Don Shows at West Monroe, then helped LSU win its first national football championship in 45 years under Saban in 2003. “Big Whit” capped a 16-year NFL career, mostly in Cincinnati, by starting at offensive tackle as the Los Angeles Rams won Super Bowl LVI, just a couple of days after he received the 2021 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award for his community activism. He made four Pro Bowls. Since his playing days ended, he has emerged as a leading NFL analyst on Amazon Prime TV Thursday night game coverage and other platforms.
Granger, a New Orleans native and Grace King High School graduate, averaged 17 points per game in a 10-year NBA career that included a 2009 All-Star Game appearance and a gold medal win with Team USA at the 2010 World Championships.
Johnson, from Coushatta, ranks among the greatest players in Louisiana Tech Lady Techster program history under coach Leon Barmore, and twice was a WNBA All-Star in 13 seasons in the league. She ended her pro career winning the WNBA’s Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award in 2008.
Scheuermann will join his father Rags, a 1990 inductee, to form the fourth father-son combination in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. The others: football greats Dub and son Bert Jones, USA Olympic track stars Glenn “Slats” Hardin and son Billy, and the football family of sons Eli and Peyton Manning, and their father, Archie.
Scheuermann succeeded his dad as baseball coach at New Orleans’ Delgado Community College and last season eclipsed the late Tony Robichaux of UL Lafayette as Louisiana’s winningest college baseball coach with 1,179 victories entering this spring in 34 seasons.
Broussard, who just finished his 42nd season coaching basketball at St. Thomas More High School in Lafayette, has averaged 28 wins per year while collecting 1,162 victories to rank seventh nationally and second in the state behind 2019 LSHOF and pending 2024 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Charles Smith of Alexandria’s Peabody Magnet. Broussard’s Cougars have won six state titles and been runner-up five more times, including this season in a 32-6 campaign.
Burkholder was a 14-time All-American gymnast and as a senior won the 2006 NCAA beam title to cap an LSU career that featured a school-record 108 victories, helping to dramatically elevate interest in the Tigers’ program locally as it emerged as a national power. She was twice Southeastern Conference Gymnast of the Year.
Weiner retired in 2016 after posting 317 wins, now seventh in state history, in 35 seasons as a high school football head coach. The last 30 were at Catholic, where he built a mediocre program into one of Louisiana’s best as he won 282 games, 9.1 per year, including a 2016 state title. He also coached 18 state championship weightlifting teams with the Bears.
Soileau won four high school boxing state crowns, beginning with his eighth-grade year, and captured the 125-pound NCAA title in 1956 in the heyday of the sport at the state and collegiate levels. He won 159 games in 30 seasons as football coach at Sacred Heart, including a 1967 state championship, and is a 1988 Louisiana High School Sports Hall of Fame inductee and an inaugural Louisiana High School Boxing Hall of fame inductee.
The 2025 Induction Class will be showcased in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Northwest Louisiana History Museum. The facility is operated by the Louisiana State Museum system in a partnership with the Louisiana Sports Writers Association.
The striking two-story, 27,500-square foot structure faces Cane River Lake in the National Historic Landmark District of Natchitoches and has garnered worldwide architectural acclaim and rave reviews for its contents since its grand opening during the 2013 Hall of Fame induction weekend.
The nine new competitive ballot inductees will raise the total of Hall of Fame members to 395 athletes and coaches honored since the first induction class — Baseball Hall of Famer Mel Ott, world champion boxer Tony Canzoneri and LSU football great Gaynell Tinsley — was enshrined in 1959 after their election a year earlier.
The Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame already includes 25 Pro Football Hall of Fame members, 18 Olympic medalists (including 11 gold-medal winners), 14 members of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, seven of the NBA’s 75 Greatest Players, seven National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, 45 College Football Hall of Fame members, 10 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductees, 10 Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinees, nine National High School Hall of Fame members, nine College Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, five National Museum of (Thoroughbred) Racing and Hall of Fame inductees. The LSHOF showcases jockeys with a combined 16 Triple Crown victories, six world boxing champions, four NBA Finals MVPs, four winners of major professional golf championships, and three Super Bowl MVPs.
Biographical information on all current Hall of Fame members is available at the LaSportsHall.com website, and a steady stream of info is available at the @LaSportsHall X (formerly Twitter) account.
The 2025 Induction Celebration will kick off with a press conference and reception. The three-day festivities include two receptions, a free youth sports clinic, a bowling party, and a free riverbank concert in Natchitoches. Tickets for induction events, along with congratulatory advertising and sponsorship opportunities, are available through the LaSportsHall.com website.
Anyone can receive quarterly e-mails about the 2025 Induction Celebration and other Hall of Fame news by signing up on the LaSportsHall.com website.
The 2025 Induction Celebration will be hosted by the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Foundation, the support organization for the Hall of Fame. The LSHOF Foundation was established as a 501 (c) (3) non-profit entity in 1975 and is governed by a statewide board of directors.
*Press release
