FAYETTEVILLE — On July 27, one week before the beginning of preseason practice, recruits were hosted by Arkansas coaches for a picnic at the Razorbacks’ football offices.
As Arkansas assistant coach John Scott Jr. was readying to leave, he noticed someone working out on the field inside the Razorbacks’ indoor facility. At 9:30 p.m., with no one else around, Randy Ramsey was going through drills while most of his teammates were off enjoying their final free weekend for months.
“Most kids you don’t see like that,” Scott said. “It just shows to where he’s going and where he’s matured.”
Ramsey, a defensive end, was seemingly always around the football complex during the summer. He would work out with the team in the morning, leave to attend classes, then come back in the afternoons to do agility drills. Some of the drills were focused on developing better movement and some were centered around rushing the passer.
“You see it on his (social media),” said Jared Cornelius, a member of the 2014 signing class with Ramsey. “He’s here when the lights are off at night, putting in the grind. That just shows what kind of player he is and how dedicated he is to the game.”
That kind of work ethic has existed in Ramsey for years. His mother, Enewetok Ramsey, recalls when Randy began playing little league football in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in elementary school.
“It used to make me mad because he would tear up my grass and I would get kind of upset,” she said. “But he’s so motivated, so even at a young age he would watch videos … and would always practice in my yard. He would get cones and at one point in little league he played quarterback, so he would study plays the night before games. He would put kids in the right place and tell them where to line up. I always thought it was amazing for a kid that young to have that level of understanding and position people prior to the games. He was a planner. He reads really good when it comes to defensive plays because that’s his strategy, to look at a lot of tapes.
“He didn’t just do all of that during the season, but he would do it during the offseason. He would always be doing pushups and situps at night before he’d go to bed, before he would take a shower. I thought that was amazing. Most people just condition for the season, but it was just his work ethic to where he did something all the time. Daily, he worked on conditioning his body.”
Along with his brother Allen, a former football player at Wake Forest, Randy Ramsey played several sports growing up, including basketball, soccer and baseball, and he swam and ran track. He even tried his hand at ice hockey for a short time.
“Hockey was a bit much,” his mom said.
He narrowed that list of sports down to three — football, basketball and track — in high school. He starred in football and was a sought-after recruit, drawing offers from the likes of North Carolina State, Illinois and Cincinnati.
But he became close with Arkansas defensive assistant Randy Shannon, a former head coach at Miami whose own upbringing in the city resonated with South Florida recruits, and chose to commit to the Razorbacks. He made the travel roster in his first game as a freshman in 2014 and played in seven games that year.
Shannon left after Ramsey’s freshman season to take a job at Florida, and Ramsey and a number of other Miami-area players on the Arkansas roster became increasingly homesick.
“After Coach Shannon left … he felt like he was all alone and just kind of shut down,” Enewetok Ramsey said.
His grades began to slip and eventually he was dismissed from the team and decided to return to his hometown.
“When I was dismissed, instead of going to JUCO, I decided I wanted to go home and be with my family for a year,” Randy Ramsey said. “I wanted to get away from the game and think about everything I did wrong and think about did I want to continue to play the game of football. I’ve been playing this game since I was 5, so I wanted to get away from it for a year.”
Getting away from football didn’t mean taking the year off.
“I told him, ‘Son, whatever you decide to do I will support you, but you have to do something — pick up a trade, enlist in the military or something, because you’re not going to just come home and do nothing,’” Enewetok Ramsey said.
Randy Ramsey looked at different options, including a number of junior colleges that were recruiting him. But he didn’t want to waste any of his five-year Division I clock in the JUCO ranks.
The only option to play high-level football right away in 2016 was to return to Arkansas, an idea Ramsey had in his mind even at the time he left the year before. He set his gap-year focus on improving his grade-point average to a level that would get him back into the University of Arkansas and enrolled in three classes through the university’s online college, Global Campus.
His mother, an educator of nearly 30 years, made him work on his studies each day in her high school classroom.
“He came to work with me and sat in my classroom,” she said. “As an educator, I know he had skills. I’ve never quit at anything and I won’t allow him to quit.”
Once Ramsey’s grades were sufficient, he began to work out and try to get himself back into football shape. Then he had to get back into the good graces of Bret Bielema, the Arkansas head football coach at the time.
“When I got my mind right, I called Coach B and he said if I do everything right, I could eventually earn my scholarship back with the team,” Randy Ramsey said.
“He was like, ‘OK, Randy, you know what happened last time. If you have any slip-ups and the old Randy comes back, that’s it.’”
Bielema also spoke with Ramsey’s mother to get a character evaluation.
“I promised Coach Bielema that he wouldn’t have any problems and that he was going to do the things that he needed to do because I was going to support him,” she said. “And if he didn’t, I was going to make a personal trip to make sure I would straighten things out. And Randy understood what the outcome was going to be prior to me coming.”
In the weeks and months that followed, Bielema and Randy Ramsey became pen pals of sorts. They texted each other almost every day, sharing motivational quotes and Bible verses.
“Without Coach Bielema, we don’t know where Randy would be at this point,” Enewetok Ramsey said. “He gave him an opportunity. I’m pretty sure Randy would have had another opportunity, but nothing like returning back to the SEC.”
Two years after coming to Arkansas on a full scholarship, Ramsey returned as a walk-on in the spring of 2016. His mother footed the bill for the classes.
“It was definitely a real humbling experience,” Randy Ramsey said. “My old roommate, De’Andre Coley, actually let me sleep in his room for a whole semester because I didn’t have money to pay for an apartment until I was back on scholarship. It was rough.”
Because he met the conditions of his reinstatement, Ramsey was awarded a scholarship in August 2016, shortly before the season opener that year against Louisiana Tech.
“When he left to when he came back, you talk about two different people — his attitude totally changed, his mindset and what he wanted to do,” Cornelius said. “It was a total transformation.
“When you lose an opportunity like that … you don’t take it for granted. Seeing him leave and come back, and seeing him realize what he was losing when he left was a big change.”
“It talks about the true grit the kid has to do that,” Scott said. “A lot of kids would be like, ‘Screw that, I’m going to junior college or I’m going to do this,’ but for Randy to come back and stay in there — because every day, it wasn’t rainbows and sunshine — and work through that says a lot about him.”
The transformation isn’t limited to his attitude. Ramsey was unable to play in the first two games this season because of a hamstring injury and his presence was missed on the field.
Since his return, Arkansas' defense has improved despite the level of competition increasing. In three games Ramsey has 11 tackles, including two for loss and a sack, and has three quarterback hurries.
“I think he understands that he has a great opportunity to lead this football team and to play on Sundays if that’s what he desires to do,” Scott said.
If pro football isn’t in his future, Ramsey can fall back on the criminal justice degree that he is on track to obtain in December. He will go through Senior Day ceremonies prior to a game against LSU on Nov. 10, a moment that is sure to invoke many emotions in all of those who helped him get to that moment.
“I was proud of his decision making and his determination to work himself back, so that he could position himself to be successful,” Enewetok Ramsey said. “If he’s determined to do something, he’s going to work hard to accomplish it and achieve it.
“He had the support piece. It’s just sometimes you can want it for the kid, but he wanted it for himself more than others wanted it for him. He’s made us all proud because of his determination to be successful.”
This story originally appeared in Hawgs Illustrated