Notre Dame linebacker commit Doug Randolph’s (Richmond, Va./Woodberry Forest) road to signing day took an unexpected detour back on September 7th, 2012 when he reopened his recruitment after being a pledge to Stanford for quite some time and immediately decided that South Bend is the place he really wanted to be. The reality of that decision will be here in less than a day.
“It's definitely a little bit of a relief that signing day’s coming up, but it's also exciting,” said Randolph. “It's really cool to finally put it on paper and officially say I'm going to be going a part of Notre Dame. “I didn't really have a lot of schools trying to flip me because they understood where my heart was and that's at Notre Dame. There's no doubt in my mind that that's where I want to be and that's where I'm going to be.”
The 6-foot-3, 238-pound defender seems to be a speed demon on the field with his 4.65 speed and after a foot injury that caused him to miss a few games early on, he bounced back to record 12 sacks on his shortened season.
“Coming back from the injury, I didn't feel like I had anything to prove, but I was going to do everything in my power to make sure my team was successful,” shared Randolph. “I was going to make sure that happened no matter what was asked of me and I told my coach to put me anywhere he felt I could help the team and he put me in positions where I could be successful. I think everything worked out pretty well.”
The Irish coaches have been keeping in contact with the Woodberry Forest standout and have already given him their vision on where they see him contributing at the next level.
“Notre Dame's going to be getting a hard-working, dedicated player,” he claimed about his playing style. “They pretty much told me they want me to play the ‘Dog’ linebacker position and I'm really excited about that. I'm really not sure what that all involves yet, but it's like a hybrid outside linebacker-defensive end position, so I'm pretty sure I'll feel comfortable playing the position and I'll be ready to get after the quarterback.”
Randolph has also had a chance to reach out to a few of the early enrollees in his class to see how everything is going in South Bend thus far.
“I recently talked to James (Onwualu) and Corey (Robinson) recently and they both are really enjoying it up there,” he shared. “We were just pretty much having a casual conversation and I can't wait to get up there and join them.”
That open communication is what the Virginia star believes sets the Irish mob above everyone else.
“I think one thing that makes us special is that we’re really close. We all keep in touch with each other and were already like family. I was just speaking to Torii Hunter yesterday and I speak to Devin Butler all the time. Devin and I live pretty close together and I really feel we have the closest class in America putting all rankings aside. There were seven of us at the Army All-American game and we were all hanging out together and we all got along very well. Notre Dame is getting a special class.”
