From Goddard basketball to Tennessee O-line, Jeremiah Crawford’s path to football stardom

Jeremiah Crawford is on the cusp of becoming a professional athlete, just like he always dreamed.

Back when he was growing up in Goddard, Crawford had aspirations of using his size and bulk on the basketball court. He was sure he was going to play in the NBA some day.

Fast forward five years and Crawford has a chance to fulfill his dream, or at least part of it. Now standing 6-foot-5 and weighing more than 310 pounds, Crawford is the starting left tackle for the No. 6-ranked Tennessee Volunteers football team with NFL Draft buzz beginning.

It’s been a long and winding road, from reluctantly quitting his hoops dream to pursue a college football career, then reluctantly switching to offensive line, that ignited a meteoric rise — complete with his own viral moment — that now has him starting for a premier SEC program entering the Orange Bowl in Miami against No. 10-ranked Clemson at 7 p.m. Friday with the game broadcast on ESPN.

“There’s no way I would even believe you if you told me I was playing college football, period, back in the day,” Crawford said. “I definitely always dreamed of being on a big-time stage for basketball, but I guess God worked everything out for me.”

‘Football was his fall-back plan’

Even though he looked like a football player on the basketball floor, Jeremiah Crawford always believed in his basketball abilities.

Every summer, he looked forward to playing on his traveling basketball team. When school began, he enjoyed playing football in the fall, but loved basketball season in the winter.

“That’s where we invested all of our time and money, the sport of basketball,” said Kelly Crawford, his mother.

Jeremiah had nimble feet and quick hands, which made him a go-to scorer in the post at Goddard. In his senior season, he averaged 11 points and 5.8 rebounds for the Lions.

“The thing I remember the most about Jeremiah was that he almost always positioned himself in the right spot,” said Kyle Taylor, who coached Crawford at Goddard and is now an assistant at Abilene. “He knew how to work the angles and just his body control for someone his size was always very impressive. He knew where to be to score his points.”

During his senior year, he was attracting interest from several NAIA basketball programs in Kansas, which was a disappointment to Jeremiah. He had bigger dreams, larger aspirations.

“Jeremiah wasn’t even a football kid in high school. He was a basketball player,” Goddard football coach Tommy Beason said. “He told everybody back then that he wanted to play college basketball, but he didn’t get recruited the way he wanted. Football was his fall-back plan.”

The thought of playing football in college didn’t become a realistic option until the winter of his senior year at Goddard when Jeremiah received his first football scholarship offer — while playing in a basketball tournament in Chanute.

An assistant coach on the Butler Community College football team was there to visit with fellow Goddard lineman A.J. Vang, who was also on the basketball team. Butler was already targeting two Goddard linemen in Vang and Chod Morrow and made it a third after the coach saw Crawford play in the basketball game.

“He came up to me after the game and said, ‘I didn’t know that Goddard had a third big boy on the line,’” Jeremiah recalled. “He said, ‘I don’t know what you have going on, but I can tell you right now your books and tuition will be paid for if you come play O-line at Butler.’”

Compared to the offers he was receiving in basketball, Jeremiah knew the opportunity was too good to pass up.

There was just one catch: He didn’t want to play offensive line.

“Nothing crazy ever came with (basketball recruiting), so I ended up just saying, ‘Screw it, I might as well go play football,’” Jeremiah said. “But I really didn’t want to play O-line. I wanted to play defense, so I could tackle and get sacks.”

‘He didn’t know how good he could be’

It hasn’t been a surprise to the football coaches at Goddard that Crawford has blossomed into a standout offensive lineman, even though he never played offensive line in high school.

In fact, Crawford detested playing offensive line so much that he didn’t come back to play for the team during his sophomore year because the coaches had him pegged as an offensive lineman.

When Crawford returned to the gridiron, he had to start at the junior varsity level and work his way back up. By his senior year, he was an effective nose guard on a stingy Goddard defense, but his high school coaches always wondered what he would have looked like on the other side of the ball.

“Everyone coaching him at the time, we could all see the potential he had, but he just absolutely hated the thought of playing O-line,” Goddard football coach Tommy Beason said. “The biggest obstacle was himself. He was a kid who had to figure out who he wanted to be. At the time, he wanted to play basketball, he wanted to play defense. He didn’t want to learn how to play left tackle.”

Even during his first year at Butler, as Crawford took a redshirt season, he was defiant about making the switch to offensive line.

There were points during the redshirt year where Butler offensive line coach Nate Haremza wasn’t sure if Crawford would ever play a game for the Grizzlies.

“There definitely came a point after that first year where we had that conversation: It’s time to get on board or we’re going to have to go in different directions,” Haremza said.

Crawford can’t pinpoint what exactly spurred the change, but remembered one day waking up and finally accepting the challenge of becoming an offensive lineman.

“I think it was the realization that they were going to cut me if I didn’t get my (stuff) together,” Crawford said. “So I just started working really hard and trying to figure out how to be an o-lineman. I guess you could say it took off after that.”

“You could always see that Jeremiah had the potential for it, but it was pretty clear early on that he didn’t know how good he could be,” Haremza said. “Once he bought into being an offensive lineman, everything just clicked. It wasn’t really anything I did, it was more about him just buying into the process and wanting to do the work.”

It didn’t take Crawford long to make up ground on offensive linemen who had been playing the position for years. He found that many of the traits that made him successful on the basketball court made him an ideal left tackle, especially for his size at 6-foot-5 after bulking up to more than 300 pounds.

“I feel like playing basketball has helped me the most, to be honest,” Crawford said. “My footwork as a big boy. A lot of big boys don’t have that good of feet. And then I would give a lot of credit to (Haremza). He really taught me what being an O-lineman was all about.”

Crawford’s stock skyrocketed after his first season playing offensive line at Butler, as he was quickly hailed as one of the top tackles available in the junior college ranks. Just three years after considering an NAIA basketball career, Crawford was being recruited by some of the best Division I football programs in the country.

Back in Goddard, Beason couldn’t be more proud of the player Crawford has become.

“The words growth and maturity are a really good way to describe his journey,” Beason said. “He’s started at the bottom everywhere he’s been and worked his way to the top. Instead of taking the easy way out and quitting, he chose to work through it and do things the right way and now he’s reaping the rewards. He deserves it.”

‘This has been the best time of our lives’

If there was ever a doubt Crawford’s transformation to an offensive lineman wasn’t complete, it was erased earlier this season in what became a viral video and moment of pride for offensive linemen everywhere.

During a fourth-quarter drive against Alabama, CBS cameras caught Crawford vomiting onto the field in the pre-snap huddle. Except when Crawford wasn’t keeled over sick, he was staring down the Alabama defensive line and nodding his head.

“I wasn’t coming out of the game, so I just had to let it out,” Crawford said, laughing. “I could tell the (Alabama player) was freaked out, so I just nodded my head and was like, ‘Yeah.’”

More than two months later, Crawford said he is still receiving social media notifications about the clip that took over college football Twitter following Tennessee’s 52-49 win over Alabama.

Watching the game back in El Dorado, Nate Haremza, Crawford’s former offensive line coach at Butler, couldn’t help but laugh.

“Just knowing everything he’s been through and how far he’s come, to see him look Alabama straight in the eyes and shake his head like that was incredible,” Haremza said. “It wasn’t that long ago where his career was staring him in the face, either buckle up or you’re done. I’m so proud of the kid.”

Playing in front of more than 100,000 fans every home game at Neyland Stadium has been a surreal experience for Crawford, who never thought anything like this was possible growing up back in Goddard.

“Every time I run out on the field and I look around at all of the people and just think about how crazy it is that I’m here,” Crawford said. “It’s still crazy to me.”

Kelly Crawford, his mother, agrees.

She spent years driving her son to basketball games. Now she makes the 13-hour drive to Knoxville to watch her son play SEC football games.

“When you’re a parent, you support what your kid wants to do and back then it was his basketball dream,” Kelly Crawford said. “You hope it pays off in some form or fashion and it has definitely paid off in full. The dream might look different, but it’s just the best thing.”

Jeremiah hopes the same work ethic and determination that earned him a starting job at Tennessee could potentially lead to an opportunity to play in the NFL some day.

“I think a lot of my success comes back to being at Butler,” Jeremiah said. “Just the mindset that the program carries, a lot of grit and determination. They instill that in pretty much everybody and that mindset has carried me a long way.”

The Crawford family has been able to reflect more on Jeremiah’s improbable journey with the time off leading up to the Orange Bowl.

He may have taken an untraditional path to arrive at his destination, but that’s what has made the journey so special.

“To see him do something that he enjoys doing and he’s worked so hard to get to, I couldn’t be more proud of him,” Kelly Crawford said. “I can’t explain the feeling of seeing him out there, but it’s definitely the best thing we’ve ever gotten to experience. As a parent, you want to see your kid achieve their goals and dreams and sometimes that path changes, so then you set new goals and new dreams. Honestly, this has been the best time of our lives.”