'TOO SMALL'S' ODYSSEY FROM PIRATES TO PROS, PRISON AND BACK

GREENVILLE, N.C. -- A big grin crosses Harold Randolph's face when he
thinks back to his days as a football player at East Carolina University.

Looking at the trophies that fill a corner of his living room, thoughts of
his time in the purple and gold come flooding back.

But not too long ago those thoughts were all he had.

After a stint as a professional football player, Randolph made a living
from dealing and using drugs, a lifestyle that landed him in prison for two
years.

"I had lost everything," said Randolph, who was released last December. "I
was addicted to heroin and my life was really tore all to pieces. So I went
to prison and stayed there for a couple of years and changed my life
around. I got saved. God has been really, really good to me.

"I tell you, I've been really, really blessed."

If you spend any time with Randolph it's hard to believe that this
laid-back guy could have once been arguably the most intense player in ECU
history.

But for the player once known as "Too Small," that intensity helped make up
for what he lacked in size.

"Coach (Pat) Dye and Coach (Frank) Orgel, I guess they instilled a killer
instinct in me," Randolph said. "They would always tell me I was too small
to hit people regularly, so when you hit people you have to have the
ability to try to kill them.

"At the height of my success, that was the mentality that I had. It was
just kill, kill, kill. So that really caused a lot of tackles that looked
pretty good on film."

Randolph led the Pirates in tackles for three straight years, from 1975-77,
and still holds the school record for career tackles with 493.

When Randolph first showed up on ECU's campus, the 6-1 freshman weighed
just 165 pounds. He got up to 185 pounds by the time he was a senior, but
that didn't keep him from earning the moniker of "Too Small." He credits
The Daily Reflector's Woody Peele for first bestowing that name on him.

"Mr. Peele interviewed me as I started to play," said Randolph. "And the
question of my size came up and he was the first one to start calling me
'Too Small.' It just stuck. As a matter of fact, I used to have a towel
that had 'Too Small' written on it. Crossing 'T' was a hammer, because I
used to have a tackle that I called 'The Hammer.'

"Back then you could hit guys in the head and I was notorious for hitting
guys in the head because I could really bring them down. I didn't care how
big they were. If I hit them across the neck or in the head, I tell you,
they went to the ground."

While that aggressive behavior was an asset to him on the field, Randolph
says it constantly caused him problems off of it.

"Once I left the field, it was still a football game to me," said Randolph.
"I stayed in not real bad trouble, but enough just to cause ripples, just
enough to cause people concern about how my attitude was."

It was also just enough to make his stock in the NFL draft plummet like a
rock. While many scouts told him he had the skills to be a first-or
second-round pick, Randolph wasn't chosen until the sixth round by the Cowboys.

"At the time that I was drafted, I was in the top five linebackers in the
country," said Randolph. "But I had a pretty bad attitude problem at the
time so that hurt me as far as the draft.

"The scouts kept coming through and telling me to calm down, calm down, but
I could not separate being on the field and coming into society."

Things didn't change for him when he arrived in Dallas. After playing his
college ball in the town where he grew up, Randolph suddenly found himself
in a new environment. The result was "culture shock," he admitted.

"I couldn't fit in or adjust to the environment," Randolph said. "So that
hurt me a lot. But even with that, I was the last player cut that year.

"I had a couple of altercations with Tony Dorsett and that raised some
eyebrows."

After failing to make the Cowboys' squad, Randolph spent a couple of years
playing in the Canadian Football League and the U.S. Football League before
ending his football career and returning to Greenville.

He spent some time working at a local car dealership before opening up a
fairly successful car detailing business. But Randolph soon found an
occupation where he could make even more money -- dealing drugs.

"During my days of my addiction and my days of drug selling, I thought I
was the man," Randolph said. "I thought I was invincible because I was
doing so many things and making so much money. I remember I was getting
high one night and I was sitting in my truck and I was thinking, 'Man, I
can't be busted.'"

Looking back, Randolph called that the end of his old lifestyle, although
he said he did not realize that then.

"I just couldn't be touched," he said. "When a person feels that way,
that's dangerous, that's really dangerous."

In 1993, Randolph and a friend were arrested by the Greenville Police
Department and State Bureau of Investigation while trying to buy three
kilograms of cocaine for $50,000.

It would be the first of three drug-related arrests for Randolph.

"I got probation for that," he said. "And I even messed that up. Then I got
busted again and got out of that.

"And I'm getting out of all this trouble because of who I am and people
knowing me. And the last time I got busted at my shop that was the
proverbial straw that broke the camel's back."

This time, Randolph went to prison.

But he had also become a prisoner to heroin, an addiction that caused the
former professional athlete's body to slowly wither away.

He went from wearing size 38 pants to a 32. And the former ECU great
couldn't even bench 100 pounds.

But after getting used to the prison system and working out, Randolph's
weight rose to 260 pounds. He was back to benching anywhere from 350 to 375
pounds.

And while he physically recovered from his drug addiction in prison,
Randolph says that religion helped him learn to right the wrongs he had
committed.

"During my -- we call it greasy days -- I could have been killed, robbed,"
Randolph said. "So many things could have happened to me, and the Lord saw
me through that."

Now Randolph lives in Greenville with his wife and son and works at
Karastan textile plant. He hopes to tell his story to others so they can
avoid making the same mistakes.

"The message that I really want to send to kids is that using and dealing
drugs is not the way to go. And I hate that I had to go to prison to learn
all of this.

"But to a greater extent it really helped me because it stripped me of
everything and allowed me to be where I'm at now."

While he admits he occasionally misses the attention he received when he
was younger, Randolph says that for the first time in a long, long while he
can rest easy at night without having to constantly look over his shoulder.

"I have inner peace now," Randolph said. "You see, I've lived all that.

"Now, I can lay down peacefully."