Extra Effort: Where Are They Now? Randy Jordan
Posted August 19, 2020 7:54 p.m. EDT
Updated August 21, 2020 12:18 a.m. EDT
Raleigh, N.C. — The Extra Effort Award was more than just "another story in a sportscast" for former WRAL-TV mainstay Tom Suiter.
Decades after selecting a recipient from a sea of nominations, Suiter can still recall the most minute of details about his winners. All these years later, it's awesome to see how much those meetings meant from the opposite perspective.
"We crank up our sixth year of the Extra Effort Award today by taking Sky 5 to Warren County High School to honor a young man who has the potential to be an outstanding running back," Suiter proudly beamed at the time about his latest winner.
"Gah, I'm so skinny!" former University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill football and NFL standout Randy Jordan said with a laugh. "Look at Tom, he's so young-looking! Oh my goodness, that brings me back, that brings me back."
Tom wasn't just whistling Dixie. Jordan parlayed that potential into Mack Brown's Tar Heel backfield followed by a nine-year NFL career. Owner of a franchise's first, a Jacksonville Jaguars' end zone innovator, forever the answer to a trivia question for recording the inaugural touchdown in team history.
After his playing days, he made three different stops on the collegiate assistant coaching scene, Nebraska, Texas A&M, and his alma mater UNC, before settling in at the job Jordan was tailor-made for. He's about to enter his seventh season as running backs coach for the NFL's Washington team.
"It's been a dream," Jordan said. "I set a course when I was younger and football has always been a part of my life. Having an opportunity to do what I do for a living I tell people all the time I haven't worked a day in my life."
That one day in 1986 may have changed the course of his life.
"I've gotten a lot of awards," Jordan said. "I was nominated NFL Man of the Year to represent the Oakland Raiders. I'll tell you, this award here, this one put me on the map.
"Being a little country boy, being from a small town, that accelerated my confidence in terms of saying 'Hey, I might be able to do this!' So, I personally want to thank Tom for choosing me because he had just as much to do with where I am today."
We'd like to thank Jordan as well, for always proudly representing himself as a winner of the Tom Suiter Extra Effort Award.
