BHS head football coach Ron Crawford, left, and father Tom Crawford, the Bruins defensive line coach (Photo by Peg Fredi for BHP)

Ron Crawford started out career after coaching for father; now Tom Crawford is his assistant

By CAROL STUART
Brentwood Home Page
Brentwood High School football coach Ron Crawford followed in the footsteps of his father, and now his dad stands on the sidelines as an active participant in support of his son.

The Bruins head coach calls it a “unique blessing” to coach with his father, Bruins defensive line coach and long-time Midstate head coach Tom Crawford.

Dad calls his son Ron “my idol.”

“I’m prejudiced but I think he's probably one of the best coaches in the state, especially defensively,” Tom said about his only son.

“He's really my idol, and I have learned a lot from him and love him very much.”

Ron Crawford, then a Riverdale assistant, and Tom Crawford, as Lavergne head coach, coached together in an all-star game.

Heading into Brentwood’s second-round playoff game Friday at Franklin, Ron’s mom, Pat, has missed only two of Tom’s games playing or coaching since she began dating Tom in high school and married him during his playing days at Murray State University. She was a cheerleader at Fayette County when they met.

“She missed two games – one when one of my daughters was born the next morning, and the other when there was a bad storm and she wasn't able to get there,” Tom said.

Even just in a phone interview, it’s easy to discern some similarities between the two coaches – they both talk about each other’s passion for the game and coaching young people, and they both defer to the other.

Head coach Ron says he wasn’t a very good player in high school at Shelbyville, before walking on at MTSU for a couple of years. His dad, meanwhile, says his son was a better player than him and that he was too tough on him when he coached him in high school.

And Ron says he’s not his dad’s boss at BHS – that the athletic director really is – but that they are just like any other coaches during practice, meetings and games. His dad says there’s no question who’s in charge and that he’s treated just like anybody else.

“It's pretty much all business, all football on the field,” Tom said about whether it was difficult having a son be his higher-up. “He gets on me when things are not going right. He's my boss on the field, and when we’re off the field, I'm his dad. When we're coaching together, he's gotten on me plenty of times. I take it and go on, and it's not a son-father relationship.”

When Ron Crawford was hired a decade ago for the BHS head coaching job, he asked his dad – then the head coach at Lavergne High – to join his staff.

“Ten years ago I took this job, he was getting near retirement, and it just provided a great opportunity,” Ron said.

“There were zero spots for assistants. I had nobody I could hire to bring in and be loyal to me. My first hire was him – he was still teaching at that time. He came over here, and it’s been a blessing for both of us able to coach together.”

Shelbyville flanker Ronald Crawford catches a 35-yard TD in a win over Lawrenceburg. (Times-Gazette photo by Bo Melson)

Coaching in their blood? 

Both men have tried other avenues besides coaching, but came back to football. Ron didn’t originally want to go down the coaching path like his dad, although he thought a lot about being a coach his senior year at Shelbyville while playing receiver-defensive back for his father’s team.

“I think my senior year I kind of knew that that's what I wanted to do,” Ron said. “But you get in college and you start to want to make more money than a teacher/coach. So I experimented with different majors and stuff. He actually got out of coaching a couple of years; he tried to do the same and make money but went back to coaching.”

Ron dabbled in business, criminal justice and history in college and ended up with 168 hours before he graduated. He joined a fraternity, and one semester he even worked at one of Shelbyville’s pencil factories. But he ended up on the sidelines with his dad.

“I became a student assistant for him at Moore County High and that lit the fire,” Ron said.

Tom Crawford’s venture out of football came the two years after Ron graduated high school, with a short-lived career in the insurance business to help boost his family’s income: “I hated it,” he said.

Ron originally started out at Fort Oglethorpe (Ga.) as an assistant, but left that job to work for his father at Shelbyville Central in 1986.

“I was only there a year, and I got a better opportunity and I wanted to stay. His wisdom let me to move on to another opportunity,” Ron said.

In a Father Knows Best kind of moment, Tom told him to leave the nest so to speak.

Father and son hold the state championship trophy BHS won in 2002, with Ron as head coach.

“He coached with me during the fall, and at Christmas he came over tearful,” Dad said. “He had done his student teaching at Riverdale and really worked hard, helped them with track, and got an offer.

“He said, ‘It’s $2,500 more – what do you think?' I said ‘I think you should take it. You know how I coach. It would be great to get experience from someone else, plus make a good living.”

Ron Crawford ended up in two stints at the powerful Murfreesboro Riverdale program, under Dean Fisher and then Gary Rankin. He took a head coaching job in between at Coffee County, and left Riverdale for the Brentwood job 10 years ago.

“I was very tough on him in high school, probably too tough,” Tom said. “I expected him to do little bit extra over everybody else.

“I was surprised he chose coaching to go into. He was an outstanding player in high school, but I feel like I didn't give him the credit he deserved.”

Ron recalls his high school days as positive, playing for his dad and winning in a small town with lots of fan support. His mother, as a coach's wife, is also passionate about the game, he noted.

 Making it to the top of the profession

There’s no doubt that Ron Crawford loves coaching at Brentwood High School. And in 2002, he reached the pinnacle of high school sports with BHS winning the then-highest division TSSAA Class 5A state championship. And Dad was a part of it.

“That was a tremendous experience to be there with my son,” Tom said. “… It’s something we'll never forget, just tremendous for the whole family.”

Tom, Pat and a young Ron Crawford

Tom Crawford says he wish he had been able to stay one place for 30 years, but he moved around in the coaching profession. He started out 47 years ago at Dyersburg Junior High for four years after playing running back and linebacker at Murray State.

The elder Coach Crawford went to Jackson Central-Merry for three years, then left for his first stop at Shelbyville in 1974. After the insurance job, Tom was an athletic director at a middle school, went to Moore County two years where he won a district championship, then returned to Shelbyville (1983-90) where his last team was undefeated.

He spent a couple of years at Clarksville Northeast and later coached Lavergne to the 4A playoffs.

“I think that the No. 1 thing that we share is a passion for teaching young people and a passion for the game,” Ron said. “I think probably both of us, as we’ve aged, have gotten a little bit soft. At times I think we’re a little too easy on the kids, not as demanding.... We understand life a little more now.”

Both father and son say Ron is more vocal and emotional on the field – at least right now.

“We're both pretty stubborn in the things we believe in,” son Ron said. “I may be a little bit more vocal, a little more of a rah-rah kind of guy. But when he was my age coaching me, he was pretty rah-rah too.”

Tom agrees that he’s not as “fiery” on the field as he used to be, but that his son is “a fiery-type coach, gets after it, enjoys it.”

“He's a lot more detailed about things, every step has to be perfect,” the elder Crawford said. “I don't know that I was back then. I think I'm more so now from learning from him. He works extremely hard. We work Saturday and Sunday after church. He puts a lot of time into it, just at home and everywhere.

“I think we're similar. I think he's a lot more knowledgeable football coach than I am. I kind of learned on the run. He was smart to stay as an assistant under some good head coaches.”

Ron Crawford baby photo

At the time Ron asked his dad to join him at BHS, Tom was 62 and “ready to retire but I didn't want to get out of it. When he asked me, I was tickled to death.

“It's been a real blessing. I feel really blessed by being able to help him. I look up to him, and I think he has an extremely great future there at Brentwood. I feel like the kids are blessed to have him.”

The younger Crawford said his father will speak up in a coaches’ meeting if he thinks Ron isn’t doing something right and vise versa. He said they’re careful not to make their family bond an issue.

“He does all the little jobs nobody wants to do, the washing, painting the field – a lot of our young coaches don't know anything about it,” Ron said of his dad.

Ron is the oldest of three siblings – with two sisters, all born 8 years apart. One works as a computer operator in Shelbyville, the other as a physical education teacher in Smyrna.

“I’m very proud of him, he's worked so hard, and has a good reputation in the Middle Tennessee coaching circles,” Tom said. “He's been offered a lot of jobs and he likes Brentwood very much. He’s had some opportunities to change jobs, even at the college level.”

The entire Crawford family at a Christmas	Crawfords celebrate with Tom after 2002 state title

Ronald Crawford pulls in a 35-yard catch at the Warren County 1 while flat on his back -- "the technique is not preferred by the coaching staff."	Ronald Crawford's diving catch against McCallie is "made more difficult by the fact he had both eyes closed as the ball arrived." (Photos by Bo Melson, Shelbyville Times-Gazette)