Chuck Crabb: A Talk With A Hoosier Legend

Since 1990, he’s been the Assistant Athletic Director of Facilities Management, essentially heading up the office responsible for all maintenance, upkeep, and day-to-day operations of all 13 Indiana University Sports venues. He works with crews to make sure courts and fields get marked properly, get painted, get cleaned, and maintained. “Our coaches, all of them maintain great pride in what they’ve been given by Indiana University, for fields of competition.” The staff that maintains those reports to Chuck, and they meet weekly to go over everything to make sure nothing is missed. “That makes this a seven-day a week job.  In the winter, you come in when it’s dark and you leave when it’s dark. Weekends are nice when they happen, but more often than not, besides men’s and women’s basketball, I announce track and field, so I’ll have those weekends (at work), but it’s all worth while. I can’t see myself doing anything else. After 39 years of full-time employment, I think I’ve made it a career I’m going to like.”

Is the iconic Chuck Crabb going to hang up his headset any time soon?   Not if he can help it. After wearing all those hats throughout the years, and lasting through five basketball coaches, Chuck still has some gas left in the tank. “My hope if that I can go through about 2020, which is university bicentennial year. That would mark, for me, 50 consecutive years of being involved with Indiana. That becomes a little bit of a pride factor, being involved (that long). I’d like to stay 50 years.”  Chuck joked, “That’s a little short of Haley’s comet, but it might be the Crabb comet. Maybe that’s when I pass out beyond into the galaxy somewhere else, but we’ll see.”

Maybe we could get some IU astronomer to name a comet after Chuck Crabb, after dedicating 50 years of his life to the university that he loves, he just might deserve it.