Growing up in Atlanta, actor, comedian, and author Finesse Mitchell never envisioned the path that his life was going to take. The one thing he knew for certain was that – no matter what he did – he wasn’t going to let anything stop him from succeeding.

Before the television shows, before the movies, before the monthly columns in Essence magazine, and well before the Showtime stand up comedy specials, Finesse Mitchell was a football player. He started out playing youth football and like many before him, he got put on the offensive line and was pretty miserable being there.

“If you’re a boy in the South or a girl for that matter, you’re involved in football,” he said. “I think it was pretty much your parents trying to get you out of the house and involved in something. In little league, everybody is pretty much the same size and I think I was a right tackle or a guard and I was pissed! I cried and said I wasn’t going back, and I didn’t want to play anymore.”

A family member talked to Mitchell’s coaches and gave the reluctant lineman a chance to run the ball. From that moment on, he was hooked on the game and the sport became a lifelong passion for him.

“They changed my number from 79 to 21 and I never looked back,” he said. “Being a lineman isn’t sexy when you’re seven-years-old! [laughs] I loved the fact that, even when I was younger, I knew I was better than most kids. I was faster and I scored a lot of touchdowns. My Mom gave me $5 every time I scored a touchdown and when I started scoring four in a game, she said we had to cut this out! I loved football and still love it to this day!”

The cheers of the crowd appealed to Mitchell from that early age and it would be something he sought for the rest of both his football and entertainment careers. Football also instilled in him two key personality traits that help him in his success even now, hatred of losing and a need to be the best.

“Football gave me a willingness to win,” Mitchell explained. “Like, I want to win at comedy. I’ve been doing comedy and living a good life for over 20 years. Saturday Night Live has like 15 cast members each season and most people only remember like two or three who are big stars. The rest you’re like, what happened to them? Where did they go? I never wanted to be one of those where did they go people. I think athletics gave me that hunger.”

It was both of these drives that led him to walk-on at the University of Miami during the heyday of the Hurricanes. While he had offers to play at other schools close to home, the Hurricanes were riding high and winning national championships in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mitchell wanted to be a part of a team like that and without having any type of plan b, he packed his bags and enrolled at “the U.”

“The U was kicking people’s butts back then and I was a huge fan of the TV show Miami Vice,” he said with a laugh. “I wrote [Head Coach Dennis] Erickson and I knew they were having tryouts in mid-July. I got accepted there but they didn’t give me a scholarship. There were a good 50-60 guys at the tryout and they kept seven. I was one of those seven.”

Mitchell would be used mostly in practice on scout teams and special teams, but he did get to enjoy being a member of the Hurricanes 1991 National Championship team and playing alongside such Miami luminaries as Dwayne Johnson, Heisman Trophy winner Gino Torretta, and current Oregon Ducks Head Coach Mario Cristobal.

“I’m obsessed with Miami still to this day,” he said. “The number one site I visit every morning is the University of Miami website to figure out where we are with recruiting. It’s like crack! We all pretty much stay in tune with the program and with each other.”

After basically starting his stand-up career on a dare at open mic night, Mitchell put to use the football lesson of hard work to use. He honed his craft and earned a coveted spot as a featured player on Saturday Night Live for three seasons.

“I will say that football has given me tough skin,” he said. “There is nothing anybody can say that’s going to shake me or rattle me. It never occurred to me that I couldn’t be on Saturday Night Live. I said I’m going to be on that show, and I did it.”

From there, Hollywood proper came calling and Mitchell has worked steadily since, appearing in films such as The Comebacks, Who’s Your Caddy, and Mad Money. He would also become a regular on the hit Disney Channel series A.N.T. Farm. He would also write a book on relationship and dating advice, his 2007 tome “Your Girlfriends Only Know So Much.” Through it all though, Mitchell has never forgotten the lessons he learned in the game of football.

“My one-hour special is out right now and just getting to that point of having so many people tell me ‘no,’ I was always like this is going to happen,” he said. “It took seven years, but it’s out there now. I attribute being able to push through the ‘no’s’ to football.”