Who is your favorite all-time Longhorn and why?

[gus fleener]

Vince.

[Baron]

Mine was Steve Worster, but I have to include James Street and Jim Bertelson. I was eight years old living in Austin and they were living God's to me.

[El Camaron Borracho]

All time favorite has got to be Ricky Williams. Put Texas back on the map, breaks rushing record and wins the Heisman while crushing Aggies. Saw it all from the upper deck. Other faves, Pete Lammons, Eric Metcalf, Tony Brackens, Roy Williams, Quan Cosby, VY, Colt, D’onta Foreman, Sam Ehlinger, Casey Hampton, Derrick Johnson, Jamaal Charles, too many others!!

[SamMan]

Bump: This is long, and I know this isn’t the proper venue for lengthy responses, but I don’t care because she deserves more recognition, softball season began today, & this thread needs further discussion (@Gerry Hamilton, I’d like to know your favorite Longhorn):

Cat Osterman dominated her sport like very few college athletes ever have. I was fortunate to be on campus for arguably the most successful period of Longhorn sports ever—football won a Rose Bowl and a National Championship; basketball went to a Final Four (women, too) and an Elite Eight; baseball went to Omaha four times, made the final series three times, and won two National Championships; and 3/4 of the WR-setting medley relay team that took gold in Athens were Longhorns + Eddie Reese was the coach. Of all the great athletes on the Forty Acres at that time (VY, Ced (RIP), Roy, Huff, DJ, TJ, PJ, Lamarcus, Huston, Stubbs, Peirsol, Hansen, Crocker, Tiffany Jackson (RIP), Sanya, etc.), Cat was unquestionably the most dominant. I think every one of those players would agree. She was a generational talent standing head and shoulders above the competition in an era when talent was seemingly at its peak in Austin.

Not only did Cat dominate at the collegiate level, she took a year off and dominated* on the World stage at the ripe age of 21 (she returned to do much of the same as a 38-year old). I’d argue that the only other Longhorn athlete who even came close to a comparable level of dominance (3x National Player of the Year) as a collegian was Ben Crenshaw. She dragged her Texas squad to three WCWS, and I firmly believe she would have won the National Championship she so richly deserved if Connie could have mustered up the least little bit of offense to help her out. Osterman is generally accepted as the greatest pitcher** in softball history, and what I find particularly endearing is the fact that she was NOT a power pitcher (by comparison). She wasn’t Nolan Ryan blowing hitters away with straight gas in the circle. No, softball’s strikeout queen was a (relatively) soft-tossing southpaw with exceptional command, immaculate control, wicked movement, a flawless delivery, and an unmatched competitive spirit. You could see every one of her pitches, but you still couldn’t hit the damn thing…that’s why she is the GOAT, and my favorite Longhorn.

*One illustrative statline from her year facing the best talent in the World (including the Olympics)—Cat registered 89.1 innings for Team USA in 2004, that equates to 268 total outs recorded…193 (72%) of those were strikeouts. She collected 18 wins, allowed 18 hits, and did not surrender a single earned run all year.

**In her collegiate career, Cat started 148 games—121 (~82%) of them were complete games, 85 (~57%) were shutouts, with 20 no-hitters, and 7 perfect games (FWIW the NCAA record book credits her with a record 9 perfect games). She is the only pitcher, since the pitching distance moved to 43’ in 1988, to post a career WHIP below 0.50. Her 0.51 career ERA is the lowest of any P5 pitcher in this century, and you have to go back a full 12 years (when the sport was still in its early stages) from the end of her college career to find anyone with better numbers. She owns the highest career K/7 ratio (14.34…meaning more than 2/3 of every out recorded with her in the circle came via strikeout) by nearly an entire K, along with the top two (and three of the top five) single-season K/7 ratios in softball history.

tl;dr - Cat’s #1