The road to the best seat in Assembly Hall

Fans supporting the cream and crimson are ecstatic when their Hoosiers take the court at Assembly Hall.\nSporting their classic candy-striped warm-ups, the Hoosiers emerge through an array of cheerleaders onto the court – the cue for public address announcer Chuck Crabb.\nCrabb then delivers his prominent introductory line to the Indiana faithful. \n“Ladies and gentlemen, your Indiana Hoosiers,” Crabb exclaims, accompanied by the band’s rendition of the IU fight song. \nNow it’s game time. \nCrabb initially didn’t envision himself sitting in arguably the best seat in the Hall; rather, the Brazil native pictured himself in the newspaper business.\n“My ambition was to be the next Grantland Rice,” Crabb said. “I wanted to be a sports writer.”\nPreceding his undergraduate run at IU, Crabb wrote press releases for his high school basketball team. For regional contests, Crabb said he ventured to Bloomington, writing press releases for the Bloomington Herald-Telephone, now the Bloomington Herald-Times. At the same time, Crabb was becoming familiar with the names and faces of the IU Athletics staff.\nAfter Crabb chose to major in journalism at IU, he was offered a part-time position at the Telephone.\nHis high school work paid off even more as he became an acquaintance of Tom Miller, who was the sports information director for IU Athletics from 1948 to 1983. Crabb accepted Miller’s offer to work for the sports information office in the fall of 1970.\n“It was a lot of fun because the Bloomington Herald-Telephone would allow me to double-cover, to work IU swimming and diving when Mark Spitz and Gary Hall were performing,” Crabb said. “I would cover the dual meets for the paper while also representing IU sports information, typing up results and distributing them to several newspapers.”\nCrabb graduated from IU in May 1973 when many newspapers were not hiring aspiring sports writers.\nAfter a stint as a desk editor, Crabb returned to his alma mater a few years later and was asked before a basketball game in 1976 if he was interested in replacing longtime public address announcer Bert Laws, who announced IU football and men’s basketball from 1936 to 1977, and wanted to retire.\nCrabb is now several games away from completing his 31st season as the public address announcer of IU basketball.\nAccompanying his announcing, Crabb also serves as an associate athletic director of facilities. Crabb said he is responsible for overseeing the daily maintenance of IU’s athletic venues and works with the varsity club’s events and schedule planning. \n“I hold a deep and sincere admiration for Chuck because of his unparalleled dedication to the athletics department,” Jim Butler, director of video services for IU Athletics, said in an e-mail. “His list of responsibilities is positively stunning.” \nCrabb said working two jobs as an undergraduate taught him time-management skills and proper organization, which are useful for what he does today. \n“Chuck is a tremendous resource, not only for what he does day to day, but his historic knowledge of the history of the program,” said Tim Fitzpatrick, senior associate athletics director. “His role goes beyond the public address in so many other ways that he’s a real asset to our staff.”