Alumni Spotlight: Randy Neal

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Returning an interception for touchdown once in a rivalry game would create an indelible memory for any football player. To do it twice in the same game?

“That’s unheard of,” former University of Virginia defensive end Chris Slade said this week. “You don’t see that.”

Fans who were at Lane Stadium on Nov. 20, 1992, or watching the game on TV, saw UVA linebacker Randy Neal make it reality. Neal, then a sophomore, picked off two passes by Virginia Tech quarterback Maurice DeShazo and returned each one for a touchdown.

“It was because of my quarterback pressure,” Slade, a former All-American who now coaches the defensive ends at his alma mater, said with a laugh.

Neal’s 12 points proved crucial in a game the Cavaliers ended up winning by only three, 41-38.

“Crazy times,” Neal said this week. “But we won. We beat Tech, so we’re taking it.”

That wasn’t the last of his heroics against the Hokies. “My senior year, I think I got DeShazo again,” Neal recalled.

His memory is accurate. In 1994, in the Cavaliers’ 42-23 win at Lane Stadium, Neal intercepted DeShazo’s two-point conversion attempt in the second quarter and picked off another pass in the fourth quarter.

“Virginia Tech was always his team,” Slade said of Neal, who ranks 10^th all-time in career tackles at UVA, with 367.

Neal, who made 47 tackles as a true freshman in 1991, went 3-1 against the Hokies during his college career. (So did Slade, whose final college season was 1992.) Virginia hasn’t experienced nearly as much success in the series since winning in Blacksburg in 1998, and that’s been frustrating for Neal and the players of his generation, but they hope to see a different story unfold Saturday night.

At 7 p.m., UVA (9-2 overall, 6-1 ACC) hosts Virginia Tech (3-8, 2-5) at Scott Stadium. The Hoos, who are No. 18 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, haven’t defeated the Hokies since 2019, but a win Saturday night would send them to next weekend’s ACC Championship Game in Charlotte, N.C.

“All the guys in my class have booked reservations for the hotels already,” Neal said, “so I sure hope it works out.”

Neal and his wife, Charleata Beale, live in the Charlotte area, and he plans to attend the ACC Championship Game, too, if the Cavaliers are in it.

“Knock on wood,” he said.

Neal and Beale met at UVA, where she played on the women’s basketball team. They have three daughters, the youngest of whom plays travel volleyball. Neal doesn’t make it back to Scott Stadium as often as he’d like, but he still follows Cavalier football closely.

“Virginia wins and losses set my tone for the week,” said Neal, a director for Optum, a division of UnitedHealth Group.

Neal, who returned to Grounds for Homecomings this fall, grew up in New Jersey and starred at Hackensack High School. He didn’t much know about UVA at first and expected to sign with Rutgers. When the Cavaliers made headlines in 1990 for climbing to No. 1 in the polls, however, his interest was piqued.

“I was sitting in the training room of my high school and one of my teammates was like, ‘Isn’t that the school that’s been recruiting you?’ ” Neal recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess.’ ”

An official visit to UVA followed for Neal, who met future classmates Symmion Willis and Joe Crocker during his stay in Charlottesville. “Had a great time,” said Neal, who signed with Virginia in February 1991.

Slade, who still holds the ACC record sacks, was a junior that fall, and Neal impressed him from the start.

“I remember he was very smart, very intense,” Slade said. “For a young guy, he caught on real fast. He was very big, very physical, and he was very coachable. He did a really good job of being intentional and learning from the older guys. He was a New Jersey guy, so he had some toughness about him. He just fit in.”

Neal’s recruiting class also included such players as Willis, Crocker, Tyrone Davis, Mike Groh, Patrick Jeffers, Carl Smith, Paul London, Eddie Robertson and Jason Augustino.

“Pretty darn solid class,” Neal said.

The Cavaliers’ defensive coordinator then was Rick Lantz. George Welsh was the head coach.

“His personality fit me,” Neal said of Welsh, who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2004. “Coming from New Jersey, I wasn’t one to bite my tongue. If you cussed me out, chances are I was probably gonna cuss you out. And that wasn’t a good mix … George was a man of few words. but when he used them you listened, and he knew what was going on. He knew the game of football. So his personality really, really fit me.”

Neal, who wore jersey No. 6, led the ACC in tackles in 1993, and he still holds a share of the conference record for career interception returns for touchdowns, with four. (His final two pick-sixes came in 1994.)

During his career, the Hoos went 31-15-1 and played in three bowl games.

“We had a lot of good guys, a lot of pros,” Neal said. They included Slade, Jeffers, Davis, Terry Kirby, Tiki and Rondé Barber, Ray Roberts, Matt Blundin, Mike Frederick, Jamie Sharper and James Farrior.

“The list just went on,” said Neal, who was one of UVA’s captains in 1994.

When he reflects on his college career, Neal said, he focuses more on “what could have been” than on everything he accomplished.

“I think about my senior year,” Neal said. “The last game of the [regular season] we were playing NC State, and they were telling us if we won, we would have gone to play Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl.”

UVA’s run defense was stout most of that season. In the fourth quarter, though, the Cavaliers gave up an 84-yard touchdown run to the Wolfpack’s Tremayne Stephens and ended up losing 30-27 at Scott Stadium.

Instead of playing in the Fiesta Bowl, the Hoos landed in the less-prestigious Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La. Virginia beat TCU 20-10 to end the season with a 9-3 record, but Neal said he can’t help wondering “what could have been if we won that [NC State] game. I have great memories, but sometimes the losses tend to stick with you a little bit more than the wins.”

He’s enjoyed watching Kam Robinson play linebacker for UVA. “I don’t ever think I’ve seen him walk,” Neal said. “He hustles all over the place.”

Robinson, who suffered a season-ending knee injury Nov. 14 against Duke, has three interception returns for touchdowns as a Cavalier. Those plays have brought joy to Neal, who remembers the feeling.

“You don’t get a chance [on defense] to touch the ball too often,” he said. “When you get a chance to touch the ball, take it and do what you have to do.”

Neal, who has a bachelor’s degree in education from UVA, played three seasons in the NFL and one year in NFL Europe. After his playing career ended, he earned a master’s in human resource development from Villanova, and he’s nearly finished with work on a doctorate in organizational leadership from Concordia University Chicago.

“I just need to write this daggone dissertation,” Neal said, laughing.

He remains close with his former UVA teammates. “We have a couple of different group chats, and we have a whole class chat, which is kind of cool. We try to do a trip a year together.”

Neal looks back on his time at UVA as the “best experience of my life,” he said. “Met my wife there. Met my other brothers there, because we all came of age. We all went from boys to men, and we kind of stick close to each other to this day. It’s an experience like no other. I have friends that went to other schools that don’t have quite the same experience that we have. It might be a clique here or a clique there, but not an entire class or classes that even cross over.”

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