Chuck Crabb Retires

[Class of '66 Old Fart 80,943]

Long-time Indiana University Athletics staff member Chuck Crabb announced his retirement today, concluding an IU Athletics career that stretched nearly five decades.

[mamasa 14,818]

Ah man, this makes me sad!!

[Class of '66 Old Fart 80,943]

Story on Chuck from 2016.

His responsibilities in the past four decades have ranged across Indiana University athletics, his mind is a virtual catalogue of critical information and his baritone is iconic.

He can tap out Bob Knight stories from first-hand memory. He knows what shades of red go on which walls in Assembly Hall. And if you’ve attended an IU basketball game since 1977, you know him. He has probably had to tell you to stop swearing.

He is an unofficial historian, has more institutional knowledge than any other athletics employee, started a marketing department all by himself and can give Don Fischer a run for his money as Indiana’s most recognizable voice.

Described by his bosses and colleagues as “invaluable,” Chuck Crabb has watched from within as college sports transformed into a billion-dollar enterprise, taking Indiana along with it. Through 40 years in IU athletics – 39 as Assembly Hall's public address announcer – he has touched virtually every corner of the department along the way.

“Chuck is going to be very, very difficult to replace when he retires,” said Kit Klingelhoffer, who worked for IU athletics for 42 years before retiring in 2012. “Chuck knows every bolt, every lock, every screw in the entire complex. When he leaves, it’s gonna be a big, big, big void to fill.”

THE DAY JOB

Crabb's current title is assistant athletic director for facilities.

“That’s the 8-to-5 job,” he said. “It guarantees a position.”

It’s also woefully inadequate in describing Crabb’s impact.

A native of Brazil, Ind., near Terre Haute (his father served as Brazil's mayor for 12 years), Crabb came to IU in 1969 as a student. He studied journalism, which took him back to Terre Haute to work in newspapers after graduation. He eventually landed a job as managing editor at the Brazil Times, at the same time volunteering to help with media relations during IU basketball games.

In 1976, his move back to his alma mater became permanent, when Crabb was hired by IU’s Varsity Club.

“In ‘76, we might have been 60 full-time people. By about 1990, we were somewhere well over 200,” Crabb said. “The budget when I started in my undergraduate career and then that 1976 return to Bloomington, we probably were about $3 million total.

“You equate that to today, where we’re somewhere a little bit beyond $80 million in our total budget. We’re full-time probably about 240 (people).”

Crabb is IU, through and through. He was courtside for two national championship teams, built season-ticket marketing plans for three football coaches and got an up-close view of one very famous chair toss.

He invokes legendary former IU Chancellor Herman B Wells as naturally as he tells stories about Knight and Ralph Floyd, the athletic director who sparked Crabb’s diverse legacy by involving him all across the department.

“Mr. Floyd had a way of reaching out and saying, ‘I’ve got a project. Will you help me with it?’ ” Crabb said. “We did that in many different ways.”

Crabb helped run events surrounding the 1984 Olympic trials, when Knight coached Team USA, and he was instrumental in organizing the exhibition between that team and a group of NBA all-stars held at the Hoosier Dome that year. He still remembers the attendance: 67,596.

“That may have been one of the greatest, if not the greatest, amateur teams ever,” Crabb said. “Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, oh gosh, Wayman Tisdale, Joe Kleine from Arkansas, (Jon) Koncak, (Alvin) Robertson, Steve Alford – just an unbelievable collection.”

Just before his death in 1990, Floyd asked Crabb to move into events and facilities. But the cheerleaders? They came long before that.

In 1979, Floyd came to Crabb with one of his problems: The football team was in Iowa. The cheerleaders needed to get there. Crabb rented a van from the IU motor pool, and off they went.

“That was the start of an outstanding year that led to the Holiday Bowl. I drove the cheerleaders out there, and then to Northwestern,” he said.

The job stuck. They all have.

“Mr. Crabb was our first advocate in athletics and moved the entire athletic community to open to who we are,” said CarolAnn Mitchell, a senior cheerleader. “He’s at many of our practices, stopping in to see how we are. He comes to every clinic and every showcase that we have. It’s very important for him to support us.”

Over time, Crabb took on a similar role with the band. He worked in marketing. It was his job to sell IU athletics. It just made sense.

In that time, he has seen IU athletics grow and expand, from a time when many of its coaches still taught classes to where its men’s basketball coach makes upwards of $3 million per year.

Crabb remembers Lee Corso, describing the vivacious former football coach as “a three-ring circus in himself.”

He watched Jerry Yeagley, who would go on to win six national championships and build IU men’s soccer into the sport’s most dominant force, dictating notes to a secretary in the corner of Assembly Hall’s I Lounge that once served as the closest thing Yeagley had to an office in the athletics complex.

Those cheerleaders, the ones who fit into a motor pool van in 1979, now have two full squads, a coaching staff and four national titles.

“It’s like he grew up in the athletic department,” said Scott Dolson, IU’s deputy director of athletics.

Dolson has his own Chuck Crabb story – as a student men’s basketball manager, he once interviewed Crabb for a paper.

“Now I’ve worked with him for 25 years,” Dolson said. “As we’ve had so many changes in the department, his importance just grew over time. He was just that comfortable voice, that comfortable person that you knew everything was OK, because Chuck was there.”

THE NIGHT JOB

In 1936, Indiana handed its PA duties to a man named Bert Laws. The Hoosiers still played football at the old Memorial Stadium, on 10th Street, at what was then the north side of campus. They still played basketball in the IU Fieldhouse just to the south.

Laws would not step away from the microphone for four decades. When he finally did, he handed off his job to a recent IU grad.

Between Laws and Crabb, only two men have handled public address announcing at IU basketball games since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.

“That’s very humbling, and it really forces me to think, that gives me a unique perspective on what’s happened with this university,” Crabb said, “the years I spent talking to Bert as we’d visit, and the advice that he provided.”

That advice was simple. You’re not a cheerleader or a band member, so it’s not your job to incite the crowd. You don’t need to read the score aloud over and over – there’s a scoreboard for that.

And then there was the wisdom of the late Bob Sheppard, the longtime voice of the New York Yankees.

“Bob always equated it to being an observer and a reporter, which, for somebody with a journalism degree from Ernie Pyle Hall in 1973, that was natural,” Crabb said.

Through the years, Crabb has blended that advice into his own style.

“Saying more by saying less, and knowing when to say less, when to stop,” he said. “I always have tried, certainly, to be a background person, never one that’s really out front.”

His trademark stands on the job though, without question.

He speaks with delicate diction, both on and away from the microphone. He calls Indiana’s arena “The Assembly Hall,” whether he’s speaking to a crowd or to a person in the press room. He even refers to it that way in emails. The soft pauses, the measured tone – it’s authentic Crabb.

There’s still been a learning curve. Like the Notre Dame game in December 1977.

The Hoosiers and Irish were locked in a tight one, when Wayne Radford scored important points late.

“I said, ‘RAADDDDFORRRRRD.’ I did that repeatedly then after that,” Crabb said, smiling. “The next morning, (then assistant coach) Bob Donewald calls me into Mr. Floyd’s office, and says, ‘Coach (Knight) wanted me to bring you a message: You either stop that stuff, or you don’t announce again. Do you understand what I just said?’ Loud and clear.

“And then he added the sentence, ‘Coach said you’re a very important part of how people see Indiana basketball, but you’re not greater than the sport and the event happening on the court.’ So that kind of set the tone.”

1976 Indiana Hoosiers' undefeated season: An oral history

Nowadays, Crabb still sits center court. He keeps his own statistics, even though IU has its own automated system. He has TV network voices in his ear with broadcast questions. And he floats seamlessly in and out of announcing the entire time.

“I was kind of blown away,” said Mark Skirvin, who sits next to Crabb during games. “I had no idea he was doing all this.”

Skirvin is IU’s senior assistant athletic director for marketing. He works with Crabb both at the scorer’s table and away from it.

“He’s basically doing the job of three people,” Skirvin said. “There are usually three or four additional bodies at most schools. He can do all of them.

“What happens the day when he leaves? I’m not sure you can hire somebody that has his skill set. Maybe we can, but I don’t know.”

AN 'IRREPLACABLE' FIGURE

When will that day arrive? Time catches everyone, even the enduring voice of (the) Assembly Hall.

But not yet. Crabb turned 65 in November, but he’s hardly old, physically or mentally. Retirement? Crabb says he’s “not even thinking in those terms.”

“My interest is going to age 70 for certain,” he said. “That would put it 2020, which also happens to be the university’s bicentennial year. Ironically, when I started as a student was the 150th celebration of IU, the sesquicentennial. So I’ve matched those 50 years by being here as a student, or a volunteer for three years, driving down to Bloomington, or the last 40 years in a full-time role.”

Some version of the word “irreplaceable” comes up whenever Crabb’s name is mentioned. At some point, Crabb figures he’ll have to bring someone else up to speed. “Rather extensive debriefing,” he calls it.

There won’t be a replacement for the emotional side of his institutional memory, his uncanny knack for remembering all the athletes that have come through Indiana.

“No matter how busy he is,” Dolson said, “no matter what’s going on, when someone would come back – a former cheerleader, a former Student Athletic Board member, a former athlete – when they’d go in and see Chuck, it was like they made their day by popping in.”

Crabb goes back further with IU than Bob Knight. He remembers basketball games played in a building other than Assembly Hall. He knows what pipes fit which, what paint goes where and who everyone is. He has worked in marketing, event services and fundraising, with Olympic teams and even as the deputy commissioner of basketball at the 1987 Pan Am Games.

Then there’s that voice.

When he sees Klingelhoffer, Crabb hears the speech:

“This is great,” Crabb said, laughing, recounting Klingelhoffer’s retirement pitch. “You’re missing the time of your life.”

But he also hears his wife, who knows he’ll never be content to be a couch potato. She knows, as he does, that he would probably just go back to IU as a volunteer.

And he hears Bob Gildea, a fixture in public relations in Indianapolis for several decades.

“He’s like, ‘Son, why do you even want to think about retiring at 70? I’m 83 and I still go in every day to (Monument Circle), where I have an office, and you’ll do the same thing,’ ” Crabb said, smiling. “OK, the challenge is there.”

[Class of '66 Old Fart 80,943]

https://iuhoosiers.com/news/2022/1/31/general-crabb-announces-retirement-from-iu-athletics.aspx

[Stuhoo 75,561]

Extraordinary:

In 1936, Indiana handed its PA duties to a man named Bert Laws. Laws would not step away from the microphone for four decades. When he finally did, he handed off his job to a recent IU grad.

Between Laws and Crabb, only two men have handled public address announcing at IU basketball games since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.

 

[Vauxhall and IU 316]

Definitely the end of an era at AH.

If you never got to experience this man saying the name "Hanner Mosquera-Perea," you never experienced true joy.

Hats off to an IUBB legend.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Vauxhall and IU
Details made redundant by merging threads

[Hovadipo 52,927]

9 minutes ago, Stuhoo said:

Extraordinary

In 1936, Indiana handed its PA duties to a man named Bert Laws. Laws would not step away from the microphone for four decades. When he finally did, he handed off his job to a recent IU grad.

Between Laws and Crabb, only two men have handled public address announcing at IU basketball games since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.

 

We're the freakin' Steelers of the college basketball PA game.

Happy retirement, Mr. Crabb!

[IUc2016 6,925]

Thanks for the memories man. My time at IU coincided with Yogi Ferrell and this beautiful phrase:

"Three point basket by Kevin "Yogi" Ferrell" - Chuck

[Class of '66 Old Fart 80,943]

https://www.thedailyhoosier.com/iconic-iu-basketball-public-address-announcer-chuck-crabb-announces-retirement/?fbclid=IwAR38MT-pftdw5SgcA-87IakojtXRionGHLBBVsF4n_EYCE4zw7kJkUKFCwM

https://indiana.rivals.com/news/chuck-crabb-long-time-pa-announcer-for-iu-basketball-announces-retirement?fbclid=IwAR0lIsKH9sEwwZSmtAvozmCFAsrqkACoVK08n_cLQ4Me_ux-Woqj0RYQl0E

https://www.insidethehall.com/2022/01/31/chuck-crabb-announces-retirement-from-indiana-effective-immediately/?fbclid=IwAR1klRc7N_gM1pySzzwYtjxMet_w01V_mMLBUi07xneNKrMM9EETui-HwTE

 

[Hovadipo 52,927]

1 minute ago, IUc2016 said:

Thanks for the memories man. My time at IU coincided with Yogi Ferrell and this beautiful phrase:

"Three point basket by Kevin "Yogi" Ferrell" - Chuck

My personal favorite is in a player's 2nd year when they become a "XX feet XX inch SOPH-OH-MORE".

[Stuhoo 75,561]

These guys are available:

 

 

How-EEEEEEE MILLL-er!!

Isaaaayyyyy-ahh T-U-B-B-S!!

 

[NOLA Hoosier 1,267]

God I hope he had some kind of protege or understudy or something. I’ll be damned if we become one of those never-been hype programs who scream:

FOR THREEEEEEEE 

like he just scored a goal in soccer. 

MAKE SOME NOIIIIIIIIIIISE. Ugh. I’m old.

[Hovadipo 52,927]

Sounds like this is effective immediately. Someone is getting thrown in the fire on Saturday.

[Class of '66 Old Fart 80,943]

42 minutes ago, Class of '66 Old Fart said:

“I said, ‘RAADDDDFORRRRRD.’ I did that repeatedly then after that,” Crabb said, smiling. “The next morning, (then assistant coach) Bob Donewald calls me into Mr. Floyd’s office, and says, ‘Coach (Knight) wanted me to bring you a message: You either stop that stuff, or you don’t announce again. Do you understand what I just said?’ Loud and clear.

“And then he added the sentence, ‘Coach said you’re a very important part of how people see Indiana basketball, but you’re not greater than the sport and the event happening on the court.’ So that kind of set the tone.”

 

Far too many announcers make it about themselves and I truly hope that Chuck's replacement doesn't take that approach.  

[LamarCheeks 16,823]

I can almost close my eyes and hear him say (as whichever team takes the field/court): 

"Ladies and gentlemen, your Indiana HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSIERS!" 

That was about as excited as he got. Loved his low-key approach. 

[mjeze106 191]

That familiar voice will be missed in the Hall. I hope he is honored on Saturday!

Chuck Crabb announces retirement from Indiana, effective immediately

[LIHoosier 24,997]

I had the pleasure of interviewing Crabb for a class my freshman year; not having any idea that he was 'the voice'. His everyday speaking is slightly different than his PA voice so I was shocked when subtly threw in that he was the PA announcer on the side. Gave me about a half hour along with a quick tour of the bowels of Assembly Hall. It was April and the floor was being set up for the Mini 500(bring it back).

He deserves to retire how he wants to. Hopefully there's a ceremony on Saturday that they show on TV.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[Class of '66 Old Fart 80,943]

49 minutes ago, LIHoosier said:

He deserves to retire how he wants to. Hopefully there's a ceremony on Saturday that they show on TV.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 

I think this is exactly how he wanted to go very quietly and low-key.

[CS2 174]

59 minutes ago, LamarCheeks said:

I can almost close my eyes and hear him say (as whichever team takes the field/court): 

"Ladies and gentlemen, your Indiana HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSIERS!" 

That was about as excited as he got. Loved his low-key approach. 

I have posted this many times the last few years, but Chuck is an icon and one of the most recognizable PA voices in the country.

Many other universities have gone to these screaming Howler Monkeys that shriek FOOOOOR THRRREEEEEEEEEEEE !!! and similar throughout the game. It just seems bush league and needy.

Let's just hope IU makes a decision reflective of the historic and classic nature of our venue. I am not saying another Chuck...but something in between with a shred of dignity.

[BannerUp40 70]

Indiana University public address announcer Chuck Crabb is retiring, effective immediately. 

Athletic Office Press Release :

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Long-time Indiana University Athletics staff member Chuck Crabb announced his retirement today, concluding an IU Athletics career that stretched nearly five decades.

A native of Brazil, Ind., and a 1973 graduate of Indiana University, Crabb worked in a variety of areas and capacities throughout his IU Athletics career. Most recently, he served as the Associate Athletic Director for Facilities, a role he assumed in 1990. But he’s probably best known to Hoosier fans as the public address announcer at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall for the last 45 years. Crabb replaced Bert Laws in that PA role for both football and men’s basketball in 1977, and has been a big part of what makes the IU gameday environment special ever since. In addition to his 45 years as the PA announcer at men’s basketball, Crabb has also had extensive stints as the announcer for the IU Women’s Basketball, IU Football, IU Men’s Soccer, and IU Men’s and Women’s Track and Field.

On top of his contributions to IU Athletics, Crabb has been involved in a variety of marquee athletic events on the national and international levels. At the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Crabb served as the Competition Producer for Track and Field, and he served as the Interview Room Manager at the Main Press Center at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He was a public address announcer at both the 1994 Men’s World Cup and the 1999 Women’s World Cups that were held in the United States. He’s also worked at a variety of other high-profile track and field events through USA Track and Field, including past Pan American Games, U.S. Sports Festivals, U.S. Olympic Festivals, U.S. National Track and Field Championships, and U.S. Track and Field Olympic Trials.

Crabb has been honored numerous times for his contributions to both IU and the world of athletics. He is a 2020 recipient of the Indiana University Bicentennial Medal, a 2010 recipient of the IU Foundation President’s Award, and a 2006 recipient of the Jerry F. Tardy Pride of Indiana Award.

Indiana University Athletics congratulates Crabb on his retirement and wishes him well in the future.