Ralph Robert "Curley" Jones (September 22, 1880 – July 26, 1951) was an American high school and college football and basketball coach.

Jones was an integral part of the development of high school basketball in Indiana and a successful college coach at Purdue and Illinois.

Due to his success with YMCA-based leagues, Butler University contracted Jones to coach basketball for the 1903–04 season.

This was the first "official" head coaching job in the long and successful career Jones would continue for the next 30 years.

Jones moved on to Purdue in 1910, beginning a three-year tenure that resulted in a 32–9 record and the first two Big Nine championships in program history (1911 and 1912).

During his tenure at Illinois, Jones took a mediocre team and within two years established a dominant system that led to a 16–0 record in 1914–15.

His 1914–15 team was retroactively named the national champion by the Helms Athletic Foundation and the Premo-Porretta Power Poll.

Even though Jones led the team to a 24–10–7 record, due to the economic depression which was affecting every business across the United States, the financial health of the franchise began to suffer.

While Jones was head coach, Bronko Nagurski made his NFL debut as a member of the Chicago Bears.

[3] During his time at Lake Forest College[4] Jones tinkered with simple options on the basic T formation.

Not until Clark Shaughnessy, head coach at the University of Chicago, approached Halas with very complex formations in 1935 did the T become effective.