By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – Anyone can try to call themselves the number one New Orleans Saints fan, but few devoted “Who Dats” can say they are willing to do what Daniel “Hollywood” Richardson did to his truck.

In honor of the Saints first trip to the Super Bowl, Richardson, a LaPlace native, decked out his grey Ford F-150 pickup with Saints flags and painted numbers and sayings on all of the windows and side panels.

“I just thought it would be a good tribute to the best football team in the league,” Richardson said. “It started kind of simple but evolved as they kept on winning.”

Richardson said he started decorating the truck at the beginning of the year when he added the car flags and used temporary paint and a car crayon to post the team’s record on the truck’s windshield.

“I changed it every Monday after each win,” Richardson said. “I kept it going all the way up to 13-0. When we reached the playoffs, I added the scores for each game.”

When the Saints reached the Super Bowl, Richardson added “Feel the Brees” for quarterback Drew Brees and “Shock the World” for tight end Jeremy Shockey to both side windows. He also applied the numbers of all the players he saw when he joined the other 20,000 fans welcoming the team home at New Orleans International Airport Monday afternoon.

Richardson said his truck has garnered a fair amount of attention from other fans, who have stopped him on Airline Highway to take pictures, as well as some local law enforcement.

“I was actually pulled over twice by State Troopers who wanted to comment about the decorations,” Richardson said. “They didn’t even want to give me a ticket. They just wanted to look at what was on the truck.”

Once all the excitement subsided, Richardson said he and his wife spent more than two hours cleaning the markings off the sides of the truck.

“It was completely worth it,” he said.

“This was a once in a lifetime deal for me. I had to do something special.”