Well, there's probably a good way to make chili in a crock pot and a bad way.
The good way would be to brown all of your meat outside the crock pot, and also sautee your vegetables to impart whatever flavoring you want in them(like my bacon preference mentioned earlier). If you do all of that, and THEN add everything to the crock pot mainly just for heating it all up, thats fine.
If you chuck everything in raw at the start and let the crockpot actually cook it all, you're missing out on a TON of potential flavor.(the steak in a microwave comparison)