Furlow stepping down after 11 years at Auburn High

Chuck Furlow sat in his office at Auburn High School, surrounded by reminders of a career well spent.

There’s the brick from his office at Gardendale, where he was athletic athletic director from 1984 to 1994. That’s sitting on top of a filing cabinet.

There’s an overflow of trophies that the Tigers have won in his 11 years as A.D. at Auburn High, ones that couldn’t fit in the school’s trophy cases. Those are sitting just about anywhere he can find room for them.

In about two weeks, Furlow is leaving that office. After 39 years of working with Alabama high school and junior high athletes, Furlow is retiring effective July 1.

He would get nostalgic, but there’s still those other stacks of paper to get through: all the grades of all the students in the Auburn City School System.

He and his assistant, Darlene Gill, have to go through them all and determine which students are ineligible to participate in sports for the upcoming school year.

That trip to Costa Rica is looking better each day.

“This office stays open 12 months a year: We never close,” Furlow said. “Each day when I get in, I mark that day off. Because showing up is the hardest part.”

Furlow has been “showing up” at Auburn High since 1998, overseeing the Tigers’ 19 athletic programs.

His duties ranged all the way from sifting through athletes’ eligibility to serving as a liaison between coaches and parents to making sure the lights on the Duck Samford Stadium scoreboard are all functioning on a Friday night.

Furlow is leaving his successor, Clay McCall, a legacy of academic and athletic success to uphold.

He’s also leaving something more concrete: A sheet of notebook paper, single spaced and filled to the margins with all the little things an athletic director has to be on top of.

“This is the only request I’ve made of him,” McCall said. ”‘Coach, if you do change your cell number, be sure I’m the first you notify.’”

A ‘special’ job
Furlow’s career in athletic administration spanned nearly four decades and an impressive swath of territory in Central and East Alabama.

After starting out at Beulah in the 1970-71 school year, Furlow made stops at Opelika Junior High (1971-72), Lyman Ward (1973-75), Beauregard (1976-81), Auburn High (as a coach, 1981-84), Gardendale and the Jefferson County Schools central office (1994-98) before winding up at Auburn again.

During that time, he coached football, baseball, basketball and track, and served as athletic director at Lyman Ward, Beauregard (for two years) and Gardendale.

But Auburn’s AD post presented a unique opportunity.

“Not many schools in the state have just purely an athletic director,” Furlow said. “But the community support, and the Board of Education, and the superintendant and the administration feel like this position is important, is what makes this special.

“I don’t have to worry about how many games I win or lose. I can concentrate on being an athletic director and dealing with all the sports.”

Without having to deal with the day-to-day grind of coaching a sport, Furlow said it gave him the opportunity to better serve the 1,200 student-athletes in grades 7 through 12 in the Auburn school system.

And that extra attention showed through, especially in his final year at the helm.

Aside from the football team’s undefeated regular season and trip to the state quarterfinals, Auburn sports featured one state champion (baseball), four runners-up (girls golf, boys track and boys and girls swimming), a third-place boys cross country finish and two state semifinalists in boys and girls soccer.

“My philosophy has always been, ‘There is no minor sport,’” Furlow said. “If you ask the parents and the players, it’s just as important to them as football is to those players and parents.

“I had one soccer parent ask me, ‘Is the next athletic director going to care about soccer as much as you do?’ To me, that meant they realized I cared about them. In that case, it was mission accomplished.”

Ed Crum, who recently stepped down as Auburn’s softball coach to pursue an opportunity in the school system’s athletic department, got to see Furlow’s egalitarian attitude first-hand.

Crum coached softball all 11 years Furlow served as athletic director. Furlow was also Crum’s position coach when he played football at Auburn High.

“He’ll be missed. But his legacy will live on, the things he’s gotten done,” Crum said. “It’s bittersweet.”

Crosstown rivals
Furlow can tell you stories of the Opelika-Auburn rivalry.

He can tell you about the time a couple of Auburn parents got overzealous after a Tigers win in football and stole Opelika’s inflatable bulldog as a war trophy.

He can also tell you how then-Opelika coach Spence McCracken informed Furlow of the missing bulldog, Furlow made a few calls, and the spirit symbol was on McCracken’s doorstep by Tuesday night.

He can tell you about the feud between the two baseball teams, who took turns committing acts of petty vandalism on each other’s fields.

He can also tell you about how he, McCracken, the two schools’ resource officers and representatives from each team hashed it all out at the Krystal on the line between the two cities.

Because for all the contention that accompanies the Opelika-Auburn rivalry, Furlow made it a point to never see it turn ugly.

“I always thought it’s important to not present your opponents as an enemy, just as your opponent,” Furlow said. “Of course we want to beat them, and they want to beat us. But when it’s over, we shake hands.”

“It’s a healthy rivalry. I think we’ve won some respect from them. They certainly have respect from us. It’s just an unusual situation.”

Furlow said his relationship with McCracken played a big role in simmering down the tensions between the two schools.

“Win or lose, we competed as hard as we could and when the game was over, it was over,” McCracken said. “He’s a true friend, and we never let anything like rivalries get in the way.”

That didn’t stop McCracken from trying to recruit Furlow’s daughter, Molly, an Auburn cheerleader in high school, to the other side.

Or from being a little sore that Auburn got the best of Opelika last fall.

“He got me on that last game,” McCracken said. “That’s something that’s going to stick in my memory for awhile.”

McCracken, who is a P.E. teacher and still helps out with the Opelika football program, said he and Furlow will continue to see each other even though both are stepping out of the spotlight.

There’s always tailgating for Auburn University football games. And possibly a sports talk radio show in the works.

“It’s either going to be ‘Chuck and Crack’ or ‘Crack and Chuck,’” McCracken said with a laugh. “We haven’t decided whose name we’re going to put first.”

Moving on
Furlow has already stockpiled enough plans for his retirement to make the past 11 years almost seem like a vacation.

He and his wife, Lynne, have been planning a trip to Costa Rica for awhile now. And he wants to get out to Austin, Texas, to see his newlywed son, Michael, and his new in-laws. And he wants to spend more time at the place on Lake Martin that he and his wife share with another family. And he’s excited to pursue possible consulting opportunities with the Auburn-Opelika Tourism Board, the Auburn Parks and Recreation Department and helping out with Super 6 when it makes its way to Auburn in 2010.

His wife also wants him to brush up a little on his home improvement skills.

“She wants me to just instantly turn into a handyman,” he said. “So I will try.”

Furlow also said he has no plans to cut ties with the program that he helped build.

Besides continuing to be a fan of Auburn High athletics, Furlow can also serve as a valuable font of information for McCall, who is entering his second AD job after five years as an assistant principal at Auburn High.

“Having an opportunity to sit down with him, the time he is taking has been a true asset for me,” McCall said. “The chance to sit down with him and his experience, you can’t find that anywhere else.”

While those he worked with are quick to heap the praise on Furlow — superintendent James Terry Jenkins called his work “outstanding;” football coach Tim Carter called him “a great source of knowledge” — Furlow is just as quick to deflect it onto others.

Such as his coaches, to whom he gives the lion’s share of the credit for the Tigers’ success.

And his wife, who he said was always supportive even with all the long hours he pulled.

And Gill, who is recovering from double bypass surgery but should be back to aid McCall just as much as Furlow said she helped him over the years.

“She’s just been such a right and a left arm for me,” Furlow said. “At one time we talked about retiring together. But the superintendent and chief financial officer said, ‘Ya’ll can’t do that.’

“‘Chuck, you can retire. She’s gotta stay.’”

Furlow said he will enjoy the freedom that comes with not having his fall Friday nights booked solid for the first time in 39 years.

But he’ll miss the field of play, the relationships with the athletes and coaches.

The things that made all those hours worthwhile.

“I just wanted to retire when my health was good enough to enjoy it,” Furlow said. “It’s like when I got out of coaching after those four years in Jefferson County: I knew it was time.

“And it’s time here.”

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