As Parents' Weekend nears, so too does a crowded Wallace Wade Stadium, chock-full of ear-to-ear smiles and three-person arm embraces as mom and dad reunite with their son or daughter while Duke takes on Maryland in the background. Then maybe it's for the best that Randy Earle is just staying home.
The Terrapins' 19-year-old redshirt freshman has no parents, no siblings and no family besides his football team that will leave him in College Park this weekend. Earle was born prematurely as a three-pound crack-baby, the son of two heroin addicts who contracted HIV from drug use shortly after he was born.
By the time he was 16 and starting to gain so much attention on the gridiron, Earle had lost both of his younger siblings to AIDS, suffering the same fate as his parents years before. But through it all, even the 18 homes through which he has bounced around, football has been the constant.
"Even in high school, football was something that allowed him to go out there and release his frustrations, his tensions, and have fun," said Al Seamonson, Earle's outside linebacker position coach at Maryland. "Going to college, it looks like he's focusing on football still, and he's continued to not be distracted from the real world issues that he's had to deal with, or that any human being does."
In some ways, however, Earle is un-human. With a blazing 4.7 speed in the 40-yard dash, a 31-inch vertical leap and a 370-pound bench press, the 6-foot-3, now 230-pound monster led his Farmingdale (N.Y.) High team to the Long Island Championship while being ranked the 16th best linebacker in the nation by SuperPrep.
Earle turned down Miami, Penn State, Tennessee and other top programs for the first real family he'd ever have: the Terps.
"He felt real good when he went down there," said Buddy Krumenacker, Earle's high school coach at Farmingdale. "I think he developed a close relationship with their coaches and their scout, Dave Sollazzo. And I think he felt like the program was much more of a family atmosphere."
So this is the new Maryland football, blossoming under head coach Ralph Friedgen, who has emphasized recruiting grounded young men in addition to transforming College Park back into a football town. And with his warm spirit, Earle is the favorite new-born baby, starting over again and getting plenty of attention.
In fact, Earle's likeable personality goes beyond the playing field. In March 2001, the mammoth high school junior stopped in front of a car accident with hundreds of bystanders passing on the highway. Earle, as if it was nothing, pried open one of the car's doors and saved a mother and her two children, saying only at the time that "what I did was humanistic, not heroic. I just did it, just kind of felt like I had to do the right thing."
Krumenacker agrees that Earle has always been able to do the right thing on the field or off.
"He's a wonderful person and a compassionate kid," he said. "He's just a good guy who understands what went down in his life and knows what it takes to rise above it. He understands that, so he's not mad at anybody, and he's not an angry kid."
Still, Earle's life certainly not lacking for bumps in the road, has hit a frustrating snag since getting to Maryland. Intense media coverage of his life's journey by the likes of ESPN and HBO forced Friedgen to ban him from speaking to the press in order to concentrate on his play.
However, Earle continues to struggle in his shift to the college game.
Even with the Terrapins thin in linebacker depth, especially with the current injury to starter Jamahl Cochran, Earle has yet to see any action, even if it might be better for his psyche at Wallace Wade this weekend.
"I think he's handled the academic and cultural transition, but the transition to college football has not been as easy for him, so he's red-shirting," Seamonson said. "Even though physically he's a good talent, he hasn't been able to make that transition yet. Obviously we have high hopes for his future ability, but I really think he'll learn from not playing this year and mature as a football player."
Mature as a man, Earle is starting to put the pieces together, finding his new home and looking into a psychology major--maybe the most fitting transition of all. The Terps may have another Juan Dixon on their hands--someone with both ability and perseverance--whom they are welcoming with open arms as the newest member of the family.
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