Frederick Eugene Crawford (July 27, 1910 – March 5, 1974) was an American

gridiron football Gridiron football,"Gridiron football"
''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Ret ...

player during the 1930s. He played

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

for

Duke Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ran ...

, and later played one season in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL). He was inducted to the

College Football Hall of Fame The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vote ...

in 1973.

Biography

Crawford was born in 1910 in

Waynesville, North Carolina Waynesville is a town and the county seat of Haywood County, North Carolina. It is the largest town in North Carolina west of Asheville. Waynesville is located about southwest of Asheville between the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains. As ...

, the son of congressman

William T. Crawford William Thomas Crawford (born June 1, 1856 near Waynesville, North Carolina; died November 16, 1913, Waynesville, North Carolina) was a Representative from North Carolina. He attended the public schools and Waynesville Academy. From 1884-1888 ...

. He attended both Waynesville Township high school and

The McCallie School The McCallie School is a boys college-preparatory school located on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. The school was founded in 1905 and now has 250 boarding students in grades 9–12 and 669 day students in grades 6–12 ...

Chattanooga, Tennessee Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, ...

College football

Crawford played at tackle and

end End, END, Ending, or variation, may refer to: End *In mathematics: ** End (category theory) ** End (topology) **End (graph theory) ** End (group theory) (a subcase of the previous) **End (endomorphism) *In sports and games **End (gridiron footbal ...

for

Wallace Wade William Wallace Wade (June 15, 1892 – October 7, 1986) was an American football player and coach of football, basketball, and baseball, and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at the University of Alabama fro ...

Duke Blue Devils The Duke Blue Devils are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Duke University, located in Durham, North Carolina. Duke's athletics department features 27 varsity teams that all compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Associatio ...

, selected All-Southern in 1932 and a consensus All-American in 1933. Crawford was the first football player to gain first-team All-America honors from the state of

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

. He was mainly responsible in 1933 for the defeat of the

Tennessee Volunteers The Tennessee Volunteers and Lady Volunteers are the 20 male and female varsity college athletics, intercollegiate athletics programs that represent the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Volunteers compete in NCAA Division I, ...

, that team's first loss in over two and a half seasons. It caused Tennessee coach

Bob Neyland Robert Reese Neyland (; February 17, 1892 – March 28, 1962) was an American football player and coach and officer in the United States Army, reaching the rank of brigadier general. He served three stints as the head football coach at the Univ ...

to remark: "He gave the finest exhibition of tackle play I have ever seen." Duke won the

Southern Conference The Southern Conference (SoCon) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Southern Conference football teams compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly ...

the same year, winning nine straight games until a loss at

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

knocked Duke out of contention for the Rose Bowl. One description of Crawford's play said he was "a hell-for-leather, hard-hitting, hard-charging, fast-running juggernaut" who "covered punts like a run-away express'" and "charged through the line like a lion going in for the kill. Coach Wallace Wade called Crawford "the greatest lineman I ever saw."

Professional football

After a brief

motion picture A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

career, including an appearance in 1934's '' Bright Eyes'' starring

Shirley Temple Shirley Temple Black (born Shirley Jane Temple;While Temple occasionally used "Jane" as a middle name, her birth certificate reads "Shirley Temple". Her birth certificate was altered to prolong her babyhood shortly after she signed with Fox in ...

, Crawford played in the

(NFL) for the

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...

. He played just a year due to a lack of size for an interior line position and a broken leg.

George Halas George Stanley Halas Sr. (; February 2, 1895October 31, 1983), nicknamed "Papa Bear" and "Mr. Everything", was an American professional football player, coach, and team owner. He was the founder and owner of the National Football League's Chic ...

discovered Crawford could throw quite far indeed, and in a preseason game let him throw what was a completion to Ed Kawal that went 82 yards in the air.

Later life

Crawford served in the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. After the war and until the time of his death, he was an official with the Florida State Motor Vehicle Department. Crawford was elected to the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 1964, the

in 1973, and the Duke Sports Hall of Fame in 1976. He died in 1974, aged 63.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crawford, Fred 1910 births 1974 deaths All-American college football players American football tackles Chicago Bears players College Football Hall of Fame inductees Duke Blue Devils football players People from Waynesville, North Carolina All-Southern college football players Players of American football from North Carolina American football ends Military personnel from North Carolina United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II