By Jeff Duncan

JACKSON, MISS. – Deuce McAllister hung up his cleats six months ago.

The former Ole Miss and New Orleans Saints star now begins Phase II – or Phase Deuce – of his life.

But before he embarked on the great unknown, McAllister enjoyed a night of reflection on Friday, when friends, family and colleagues feted him at a retirement dinner at the Jackson (Miss.) Convention Center.

“Celebrating a Saint” was a wonderful evening, with several heartwarming testimonials to McAllister and his standout career at Morton High School, Ole Miss and the Saints.

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Fans wanting to see Drew Brees during his book tour Saturday in New Orleans are going to have to arrive really, really early: Fans already were lined up to see Brees on Friday night.

By about 10 p.m. Friday night, more than 50 fans were lined up at Barnes and Noble on Veterans Boulevard, with the line already around the corner and halfway down the building.

Fans kept coming after that, and it looks like they’ll keep coming throughout the night. The parking lot was nearly full by 10 p.m.

Read the entire store here.

By Pat Yasinskas

Saints: Drew Brees, quarterback.

Claim to fame: He led the 2009 Saints to their first Super Bowl championship while throwing for 34 touchdowns and posting a career-best 109.6 passer rating. Brees threw for a career-best 5,069 yards in 2008. He has thrown for 30,646 yards in a nine-year career.

Case for enshrinement: Brees has been more than a quarterback for the Saints. Arriving as a free agent in 2006, Brees has helped New Orleans and the entire Gulf region rebound from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Brees has taken an extremely active role in the community and has done just as much on the field.

He is the perfect quarterback for coach Sean Payton’s offense. Brees has made the Saints one of the most fun teams in the league to watch while putting up huge offensive numbers. With Brees, the Saints have reached heights the franchise never came close to before.

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William P. Barrett,

IRS disputes New Orleans team’s claim that $8.5 million annual payment from Louisiana wasn’t taxable as income.

Did the New Orleans Saints have some accounting help as they marched in to their Super Bowl win this year over the Indianapolis Colts?

In a just-filed U.S. Tax Court lawsuit, the partnership owning the Saints acknowledges that it didn’t treat an $8.5 million annual payment from the state of Louisiana as income and therefore didn’t pay taxes on the sum. Rather, the team said the money was an addition to “working capital” and a nontaxable transaction.

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Robert Stewart, The Times-Picayune

The Vince Lombardi Trophy is taking a trip around the Gulf South.

The New Orleans Saints, along with the United States Marine Corps and the National Guard, will go on a “Championship Tour” this month to various places around the Gulf South region to celebrate the Saints’ 31-17 Super Bowl victory against the Indianapolis Colts on Feb. 7.

The Lombardi Trophy will be on display during the tour, along with quarterback Drew Brees’ Super Bowl helmet and jersey, the George S. Halas NFC Championship Trophy, a Super Bowl highlight video and an official Super Bowl ring.

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NFL Rewards Points To Expire Aug. 31

METAIRIE, La. — Football fans who are literally card-carrying members of the Who-Dat Nation are running out of time to get their just rewards.The NFL is making a change in its league-sanctioned credit card program, and participants in the current rewards program have until the end of August to cash in their points.Bank of America is the outgoing partner in the league-sponsored “NFL Extra Points” Visa card program. By the time the 2010 season kicks off, British bank Barclay’s will take over.That means customers who have earned rewards points through Bank of America must use them by August 31.Points can be cashed in for NFL merchandise, like team jerseys, hats and game tickets.

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BY JAY PARIS – jparis@nctimes.com

LA COSTA — In-N-Out it wasn’t.

But when Saints rookies were invited to a Louisiana crawfish boil, well, you go son.

Quarterback Sean Canfield went, swallowed hard, and survived.

“I forced about six of them down,” said Canfield, a former Carlsbad High star. “I mean forced.”

Canfield is getting his arms — and his mouth — around New Orleans. Drafted in the seventh round in April, Canfield is absorbing the humidity and just what the Saints mean to their boisterous boosters.

“It’s different,” Canfield said last week while attending the NFL’s rookie symposium at La Costa Resort and Spa. “That crawfish boil was my first real taste of the spirit of the fans and their enthusiasm for that team is like no other.”

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FIRST TWO WEEKS.

By NewOrleansSaints.com

Posted Jun 28, 2010

World Champion Saints Beging Training Camp on July 30 in Metairie, La.

2010 New Orleans Saints Training Camp Schedule

By Aaron Kuriloff and Barry Rothbard

New Orleans Saints Coach Sean Payton said his National Football League team had a special operative who helped win the Super Bowl: sports agent Mike Ornstein.

Payton said Ornstein helped arrange logistics such as game tickets and travel for players’ in-laws, minimizing crises. He also dreamed up irritations for the Saints’ opponent, the Indianapolis Colts, including strategically placing the Saints’ fleur-de-lis symbol around the Miami area.

“There is a little bit of a propaganda battle to how we travel — the hotels we’re staying in, what the wives are getting, the flowers, the cameras, the billboards — and that’s one thing we felt like we needed to win prior to even playing the game,” Payton said in an interview today. “By the end of the week, the scene was the fleur-de-lis everywhere.”

Payton said in his new book “Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life,” that he got off to a rocky start with Ornstein, who called the team in 2006 to discourage Payton from drafting running back Reggie Bush. That conversation ended when the newly hired coach hung up on Ornstein with an expletive.

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