NATCHITOCHES – LSU graduate Herb Vincent, affiliate commissioner of the Southeastern Convention for the previous 11 years after greater than two impactful a long time as an administrator and publicist at his alma mater, is the 2025 winner of the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports activities Management Award offered by the Louisiana Sports activities Corridor of Fame.
Vincent served as senior affiliate athletics director and as affiliate vice chancellor for college relations at LSU earlier than stepping right into a management function on the SEC. Subsequent June 28 on the Corridor of Fame’s 2025 Induction Ceremony in Natchitoches, he’ll change into the twenty fourth recipient of the Dixon Award since its inception in 2005, and will likely be enshrined within the Corridor.
The Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports activities Management Award has been offered yearly by the Louisiana Sports activities Writers Affiliation’s 35-member Corridor of Fame choice committee to a person who has performed a decisive function as a sports activities chief or administrator benefiting Louisiana and/or bringing credit score to Louisiana on the nationwide and worldwide stage.
It’s named in honor of the 1999 LSHOF inductee, an entrepreneur and innovator who’s credited as the important thing determine in bringing an NFL franchise to New Orleans, and the event of the Caesars Superdome, highlighting an array of sports-related endeavors.
Vincent’s choice was introduced Wednesday morning by Louisiana Sports activities Writers Affiliation president John Marcase and Doug Eire, the longtime chairman of the Corridor of Fame. Vincent emerged from a poll showcasing 25 noteworthy nominees for the Dixon Award.
Vincent will likely be among the many 11-member 2025 Louisiana Sports activities Corridor of Fame Induction Class headlined by eight “aggressive poll” inductees introduced in September. Two others, who will obtain the LSWA’s Distinguished Service Award in Sports activities Journalism, will likely be introduced quickly.
The Class of 2025 is headlined by a star-studded group of eight inductees from the LSHOF “rivals poll,” headlined by West Monroe, LSU and NFL star Andrew Whitworth, professional basketball All-Stars Danny Granger and Vickie Johnson, and training greats Danny Broussard, Joe Scheuerman and Dale Weiner.
The LSHOF Class of 2025 additionally contains LSU gymnastics nice and NCAA champion April Burkholder, and George “Bobby” Soileau, an NCAA boxing champion at LSU who received a state crown as a soccer coach at his alma mater, Sacred Coronary heart Excessive College in Ville Platte.
The 2025 Induction Class will likely be celebrated June 26-28 in Natchitoches, Alternatives to buy admission for the 4 ticketed occasions can be found on the LaSportsHall.com web site by the www.LaSportsHall.com/Induction25 hyperlink.
The Class of 2025 will likely be showcased within the Louisiana Sports activities Corridor of Fame and Northwest Louisiana Historical past Museum, operated by the Louisiana State Museum system in a partnership with the Louisiana Sports activities Writers Affiliation. The putting $23 million, two-story, 27,500-square foot construction faces Cane River Lake within the Nationwide Historic Landmark District of Natchitoches and has garnered worldwide architectural acclaim and rave evaluations for its contents since its grand opening throughout the 2013 Corridor of Fame induction weekend.
In his present function beneath SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Vincent is liable for all communication methods for the league in addition to serving as SEC spokesperson. He has been a part of the convention’s administrative group because the SEC has emerged because the tonesetting league in NCAA sports activities, revolutionizing not solely main school soccer however the panorama of intercollegiate athletic competitors.
Previous to that, he served greater than twenty years at LSU, starting as assistant sports activities data director, rapidly getting promoted to SID and an assistant AD’s function. He briefly left LSU in 2002, however returned two years later and afterward was named Senior Affiliate Athletic Director in 2006 after which added a twin function as college Affiliate Vice Chancellor for College Relations in 2009.
Whereas in that function he supervised the SID and the advertising and marketing/promotions workplace, was the first liaison with LSU Sports activities Properties, and was division administrator for the vastly profitable LSU baseball program. He served as SID from July 1988 till July 2000 when he was named Vice President for Communications for Faculty Sports activities Southeast regional cable community earlier than returning to LSU in 2002.
Vincent grew to become the primary Louisiana-rooted particular person to function the nationwide president for the Faculty Sports activities Info Administrators of America (CoSIDA) in 2019-20 after 4 years on that group’s board of administrators. He additionally acquired one in every of CoSIDA’s high honors, the Arch Ward Award in 2019 for excellent contributions to the occupation, and was a CoSIDA 25-year award winner in 2012.
In 2015, Vincent was named to the LSU Alumni Corridor of Distinction, and likewise has been inducted within the college’s Manship College of Mass Communications Corridor of Fame.
His work within the occupation by the years has been acknowledged for excellence many occasions, together with an array of LSWA honors for him and his LSU workers. He labored on the LSU workers beneath Louisiana Sports activities and CoSIDA Corridor of Famer Paul Manasseh throughout his undergraduate days earlier than incomes his journalism diploma in 1983.
Vincent spent the 1984 and 1985 seasons as public relations director for the USFL’s New Orleans Breakers – when Dixon was one of many franchise’s house owners — and the Los Angeles Categorical.
After the USFL folded, he additionally served one 12 months as athletics publications director at UL Lafayette and was on the SEC workers as assistant director of public relations for 2 years previous to returning to LSU in 1988. An creator of a ebook on LSU soccer, “The LSU Soccer Vault,” Vincent is a local of Little Rock.
The Dixon Award’s 2024 recipient was longtime Southland Convention commissioner Tom Burnett, a Louisiana Tech and West Monroe Excessive College graduate whose service to the Southland and on NCAA committees in a number of sports activities culminated together with his function as chairman of the 2022 Males’s Basketball Committee that oversaw postseason play concluding with the Closing 4 in New Orleans.
No Dixon winner was chosen in 2023. The 2022 recipient was Larger New Orleans Sports activities Basis president Jay Cicero, a Shreveport native whose three a long time of management within the Crescent Metropolis has been full of main sports activities occasions and plentiful group service by the muse. He’s heading preparations for the upcoming Tremendous Bowl in New Orleans.
The 2021 Dixon Award winner was retired NFL referee Terry McAulay, a Hammond native and LSU graduate. McAulay, now the foundations analyst for NBC’s Sunday Night time Soccer, is one in every of a handful of referees to work three Tremendous Bowls.
The 2020 recipient was Joan Cronan, an Opelousas native and LSU graduate who grew to become some of the revered directors in collegiate athletics as ladies’s athletics director, after which general athletics director, on the College of Tennessee.
Different previous Dixon Award recipients embody the 2018 winner, Steve Gleason, the previous New Orleans Saints participant who has change into globally acknowledged as one of many world’s main advocates for folks recognized with ALS, generally often called Lou Gehrig’s Illness.
In 2008, the Dixon Award went to world-renowned orthopedic Dr. James Andrews, a Homer native, LSU graduate and SEC champion pole vaulter.
Paul Hoolahan, government director and chief government officer of the Allstate Sugar Bowl Traditional for 23 years, was offered the 2015 Dixon Award.
The 2016 winner was world-renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Julian Bailes, a Natchitoches native and LSU graduate who has change into a number one determine within the area of sports-related concussion analysis and therapy.
Sue Donohoe, who served because the NCAA’s vice chairman for ladies’s basketball for 12 years, and likewise directed the boys’s basketball NCAA Division I championship, was the 2017 recipient.
The 2025 LSHOF Induction Celebration is slated to kick off Thursday, June 26, with a press convention and reception. The three-day festivities embody two receptions, a youth sports activities clinic, a bowling occasion, a Saturday luncheon and a Friday night time riverbank live performance in Natchitoches. Purchases for 4 ticketed occasions, culminating with the Saturday night time, June 28 Induction Ceremony, together with congratulatory promoting and sponsorship alternatives, can be found by the LaSportsHall.com web site.
Including to the 394 sports activities rivals at present enshrined, 23 winners of the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports activities Management award and 75 recipients of the Distinguished Service Award in Sports activities Journalism, there are 492 present members of the Corridor of Fame.
The Induction Celebration weekend will likely be hosted by the Louisiana Sports activities Corridor of Fame Basis, the help group for the Corridor of Fame. The LSHOF Basis was established as a 501 c 3 non-profit entity in 1975 and is ruled by a statewide board of administrators.
For data on sponsorship alternatives, contact Basis President/CEO Ronnie Rantz at 225-802-6040 or RonnieRantz@LaSportsHall.com or Basis Director of Enterprise Improvement and Public Relations Greg Burke at 318-663-5459 or GregBurke@LaSportsHall.com . Customary and customised sponsorships can be found.
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Doug Eire
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