By JOHN HENRY, Written For the Louisiana Sports Writers Association
(Fifth in a series on inductees into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in Natchitoches on Saturday.)
As a 2026 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism and his
induction into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in Natchitoches, Gil LeBreton takes his place in the
state’s sports lore — not as an athlete or coach, and certainly not for a double life led as
“the human Ouija board.”
To attend this year’s Hall of Fame weekend in Natchitoches, visit LaSportsHall.com or call 318-238-
4255.
As the fearless forecaster of all things sports each Jan. 1, this “Nostradamus with the
nostra-mostest” often made Mario Mendoza look like a contact hitter. But each year,
without fail, the polished crystal ball was brought back out and eventually even “retro-
fitted for the digital transition.”
Jerry Jones hosting the Mary Kay convention at AT&T Stadium — including offering
discounted Party Zone tickets to attendees — was a miss in 2010. Gil did, however,
accurately predict the Texas Rangers would win the AL West that season, as well as
TCU’s Horned Frogs making a trip to the Granddaddy of Them All — the Rose Bowl —
where they would face, ahem, Ohio State.
“If you’re scoring along at home, this is the 29th annual edition of the predictions
column,” he wrote in 2011, patting himself on the back for a few hits the year before.
“Sooner or later, in other words, I was bound to get something right.”
No, Gil LeBreton will live in Louisiana sports posterity because of a masterful ability to
marry exceptional prose with a deep understanding of sport and the human condition,
and a storyteller’s gift for connecting with readers, making them laugh, think, remember
and care.
As part of a 12-member Class of 2026, the New Orleans native and LSU graduate is
going into the state’s sports Hall to conclude three days of festivities on Saturday (7 p.m., LPB).
Over the course of a 50-year, award-winning sportswriting career, Gil has borne witness
to some of the most significant moments in sports history in arena and stadium press
boxes around the world.
“Gil writes with insight and humor, shoving flowery prose aside for columns that followed
a natural rhythm, direct and unpretentious, human and authentic,” says T.R. Sullivan, a
former colleague and longtime beat writer of Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers.
“He used his needling wit and superb analytical mind to take on serious subjects in an
entertaining and informative style.”
Gil was one of the most versatile sportswriters of his era, and, more than all that, he
was a respected colleague and remains a steadfast friend and mentor to so many.
A New Orleans native, product of Jesuit High School, and LSU Journalism graduate, Gil
built one of the most accomplished careers in American sportswriting, covering
everything from neighborhood heroes to the biggest stages in the world.
LeBreton was perhaps the best of dozens of graduates of the Paul Manasseh School of Sports Writing at LSU. Manasseh was LSU’s legendary sports information director from 1971-83.
As LeBreton’s career blossomed from his LSU days, he chronicled legends ranging from Muhammad Ali and Tom Landry to
Nolan Ryan, Jack Nicklaus, and John Wooden.
Gil earned a reputation for marrying elegant prose with sharp reporting, using sports as
a lens to explore character, ambition, triumph and disappointment. His work from
multiple Olympic Games garnered state and national honors, and he remains the only
journalist to be named Sportswriter of the Year in both Louisiana and Texas.
A Vietnam veteran, Gil returned home to earn his degree before embarking on a career
that took him across the globe and into the press boxes of nearly every major sporting
event imaginable.
In 2024, he was inducted into the LSU Manship School Hall of Fame, and in 2026 he received the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame’s Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism.
One memorable piece by LeBreton for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram detailed a contract dispute between the Cowboys and star running back Tony Dorsett.
“All along he said it was no big deal,” Gil wrote. “From curtain up to final bow, Tony Dorsett claimed he couldn’t comprehend the tremors he stirred during his week long drama of dueling agents. It went like this:
Cowboy Bankroll Held Hostage Day Five. Legend retires. Star demands money. Star threatens walkout. Star wants trade. Agent No. 1 puts pistol, later found unloaded, to team’s head and demands untold riches, plus a jet out of town.
“And yet the man said it was no big deal,” LeBreton wrote.
“This was something that could have been resolved without it being, like I said, ‘a public
issue,’” said Dorsett.
“Unfortunately, it just happened to turn out that way,” LeBreton wrote. “Perhaps next time he would prefer to negotiate in the confessional, or maybe just a Candygram or two. Whatever, this week’s siege on the Cowboys’ tranquil nerves reeked of bad timing and bad advice, not all of it on Dorsett’s side of the negotiating table. It is becoming more and more difficult to hold even the slightest sympathy with grown men who wail all the way to the bank. How can a man reared on Hamburger Helper and
a 12-year-old Zenith even remotely empathize with a guy who has a five-figure house note and wears a full-carat diamond in his left ear?
“Yet, there is the feeling that Dorsett is right, that he certainly deserved to be making as much as the Cadillacs of his profession, especially considering his post-Staubach importance to the Cowboys. Renegotiation, after all, is no greater sin than marching into
the boss’s office to ask for a raise. If rejected, at least we always have the freedom to tie down the chickens and move the farm to Waco.”
Gil reported from 26 Super Bowls, 13 World Series, 16 NCAA Final Fours, the World
Cup, the Masters, the Tour de France, Wimbledon, and countless other major events.
He is the only sportswriter who ever left the New Orleans Times-Picayune for the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate. He went on to the Kansas City Star, Baltimore News American and, most notably, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where his columns – and, yes, his annual fearless prognosticating — became required reading for generations of sports fans in perhaps the most competive sports page market in the country back in the day.
His first Olympics was the 1976 Montreal Games.
Gil’s reporting from the Olympic Games won numerous state and national awards. His
stories for the Picayune on Louisiana Olympic hopefuls, including the married
Armstrongs – the “world’s fastest family” — were honored as the LSWA’s top series.
He had a front row seat to the Game’s biggest stories.
“Comaneci mania! It reached out and touched this Olympic city during the past week as
it has not been moved since Maurice Richard was in training skates,” he wrote.
He reported on the U.S. Olympic Basketball team’s redemption and recouping of its
rightful place at the top of the mountain of basketball in the world. The Americans
dropped Tito’s Yugoslavia under coach Dean Smith for gold.
The Olympic experiences proved transformational, igniting a lifelong passion for Olympic
storytelling. Gil would go on to cover 15 more Olympic Games, chronicling some of the
most memorable moments, athletes, and issues of the modern era.
Gil’s column from the opening day of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics was less about the
Games themselves than about an unwelcome guest in attendance: former President
Jimmy Carter.
Writing with bite, Gil argued that Carter had no business basking in the glow of the
Centennial Olympics because of his decision to lead the U.S. boycott of the 1980
Moscow Games in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
To make his case, Gil focused on Patty Dowdell, captain of the 1980 U.S. women’s
Olympic volleyball team, recounting how Dowdell – in 1996 the head coach of Texas
Woman’s University’s volleyball team in Denton — and her teammates learned on their
way to a match that their Olympic dreams had been erased by a political decision
beyond their control.
The boycott accomplished little against the Soviet Union while inflicting enormous
damage on American athletes and nearly crippling the Olympic movement itself. He
noted that only the commercial success of the 1984 Los Angeles Games rescued the
Olympics from the damage caused by the reciprocal boycotts of 1980 and 1984.
“How dare you show your face tonight, Jimmy Carter,” LeBreton wrote. “Huey P. would have been proud.”
Gil’s reach would touch on just about every topic in his more than 40 years at the
Star-Telegram, including Fort Worth’s greatest era of boxing.
Likewise, during his four decades in DFW, Gil was also on-site for the most significant
pro sports events.
LeBreton chronicled the Cowboys’ dynasty years, including victories in Super Bowls
XXVII, XXVIII and XXX. He also led readers through championship seasons of the
Dallas Stars and Dallas Mavericks. Gil witnessed some of the defining moments in
Rangers history, from the franchise’s first World Series berth in 2010 to the devastating Game 6 collapse in St. Louis the following year, one of baseball’s most painful near- misses.
His were the words many Cowboys fans needed in February 1989, in the painful days
following Tom Landry’s firing and Tex Schramm’s impending departure. To much of
North Texas, Landry and Schramm were more than a coach and general manager; they
were enduring fixtures in the lives of generations of fans.
“The sun did come up at Valley Ranch yesterday. But there was still an ugly stench in
the air,” he wrote. “It was the morning after the Cowboys’ rendition of The Saturday Night Massacre. No
bullet holes. No body outlines chalked on the carpet. But if you looked hard enough, there in his office was Tom Landry, the fresh knife still stuck in his back. And there down the hallway was Tex Schramm, still trying to mend
the pieces of his broken heart.”
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