Houston Sports: The ten best athletes to ever represent the city of Houston

The history of Houston sports franchises started in 1959, with the founding of the Houston Oilers. A scant three years later, the Colt. 45’s showed up on the scene, eventually becoming the Houston Astros in 1965.

In 1971, Houston Sports received the Rockets who were founded four years earlier in San Diego.  I’d also like to point out how weird it is that they were the Rockets in San Diego before becoming the Houston Rockets. It’s like the inverse of the New Orleans Jazz moving to Utah where the name made MORE sense after the move.

All digressions aside, in that time since 1959, Houston sports has had plenty of amazing athletes don a Houston sports jersey, becoming icons of the city in the process.

The following is a comprehensive list of the ten best athletes to ever represent Houston sports. A little criteria for the list before we get into it. These are the considerations that were made for each player being placed on the list and their respective ranking:

• Identified primarily as a Houston sports athlete
• Career achievements of the player
• Accomplishments the team had while the athlete played for them
• Connections the athlete still has to the city
• Connections the athlete still has to the franchise they played for
• Overall greatness and talent

This confluence of prerequisites is the amalgamation of the list that is the ten greatest athletes to ever represent the city of Houston. Also that last sentence has three words at the beginning of it that are three syllables or longer and I went to college as a theater major, so you figure it out.

With all that in mind, here is the list…