While many players made contributions to Austin Peay’s 1977 Ohio Valley Conference championship team, few were as imposing as Ron Sebree.
In an era before quarterback hurries were kept, before tackles for loss or sacks were routinely tracked, Sebree ruled with an iron fist along the defensive front from the first day he walked on campus, making 39 starts among the 43 times he put on an Austin Peay uniform. In the process, he became one of the most steadfast, reliable tacklers in one of the most successful eras of Austin Peay football history.
Sebree came to Austin Peay from nearby Christian County High School in Hopkinsville, where he was a all-state performer in 1974. From the beginning of his Austin Peay career, Sebree was a standout. As a freshman in 1975, he recorded 108 tackles—not an inconsequential number alongside Terry McCabe, who recorded 94 solo tackles of his own that season. He followed that up with a 90-tackle performance as a sophomore as the Govs improved from 3-8 to 5-6.
Sebree’s junior season was one for the record books. Alongside Bob Bible, who recorded 170 tackles, Sebree made 135 stops to lead a ferocious Austin Peay defense that helped win the program’s first Ohio Valley Conference Championship. Sebree picked up the first of two All-Ohio Valley Conference honors and honorable mention Little All-American—one of five a program-record five Governors to earn All-American honors from the championship team.
The 1978 season saw Sebree record a second All-OVC campaign with 77 total tackles and serve as captain for an Austin Peay squad which recorded back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in a 12 years. He concluded his career with 258 unassisted tackles—a mark that remains third all-time—and 410 total tackles, the fourth-highest mark in school history. Both totals are Austin Peay records for a defensive lineman.
After concluding his APSU career, Sebree spent a season as a student assistant and another season at Middle Tennessee before entering the coaching ranks in Georgia—he won two region titles and appeared in the state playoffs four times at Columbia High School, twice earning DeKalb County Coach of the Year honors (1992, 1996) and winning a state wrestling championship as an assistant coach in 1988.
He served 10 years as a member of the Georgia High School Athletic Association Executive Board and retired from the school system in December 2011 after 32 years, ascending to DeKalb County School System Athletic Director in 2007, supervising athletics for the third-largest school system in the state of Georgia. He was also inducted into the Christian County (Ky.) Athletic Hall of Fame in 2011.
Sebree and his wife Janice have two children—Janitrea and Leslie.
