  We present morphological and statistical results of a study of neutral
hydrogen (HI) in a complete sample of nearby, non-cluster radio galaxies. We
detect large-scale HI emission in the early-type host galaxies of 25% of our
sample sources. The large-scale HI is mainly distributed in disk- and ring-like
structures with sizes up to 190 kpc and masses up to 2 x 10^10 M_solar. All
radio galaxies with M_HI >= 10^9 M_solar have a compact radio source. When we
compare our sample of radio-loud early-type galaxies with samples of
radio-quiet early-type galaxies there appears to be no significant difference
in HI properties (mass, morphology and detection rate). This suggests that that
the radio-loud phase could be just a short phase that occurs at some point
during the life-time of many, or even all, early-type galaxies.
