SALT LAKE CITY — Scott Mitchell was always one of those guys who seemingly had it all.
The proverbial tall, dark and handsome guy, he was a multi-sport star at Springville High School who went on to have a solid collegiate football career as a quarterback at the University of Utah. That was followed by 11 seasons (and one megabucks contract) in the National Football League.
It was the kind of life that most young athletes can only dream about.
But for many years, to Mitchell, it was all just a huge disappointment. Rather than relishing all of his many accomplishments and enjoying his successes, he dwelled on his failures and fretted about those times he'd fallen short.
And it ate at him — constantly.
It wasn't until, in his mid-40s and terribly overweight, he agreed to go on the television series "The Biggest Loser" in 2014. And that was when Mitchell, for perhaps the first time, finally accepted the fact that he'd done some pretty impressive things in his life, and he realized he had plenty to be proud of and a life to be grateful for.
Indeed, the difficult journey that led him from self-loathing to eventually being able to love himself and accept his shortcomings is the basis of an autobiographical new book, "Alive Again," which is now available (see attached box).
"What's hard about this and probably really good at the same time is just to put yourself out there emotionally," Mitchell said. "It's one thing to feel really comfortable in an arena with thousands of people there, and millions more watching on television. But I was really comfortable in that arena. I thrived on it; I lived for it. There wasn't a greater feeling or emotion than playing professional football; it's unbelievable how it makes you feel. Oh my goodness!
"But to put yourself out there in the pages of a book, and to put yourself out there in a way where, this is something I'm not good at, I really struggle with it, especially with my weight and that whole thing.
"That's how the TV show started, and that's how we start the book," said Mitchell, whose weight had ballooned to 366 pounds at the time the TV series started. "I was in the middle of the L.A. Coliseum, and I'm like, 'OK, I should be comfortable here, this is my arena,' but I was terrified. … I knew that millions of people were going to see what's become of me, and I felt like I was in the most bizarre dream I've ever had and I was extremely uncomfortable.
"And what I found was that facing something that's really difficult and you're not good at, and being willing to have a problem and admit I need help and being open and honest about it is really what saved my life, which I found so ironic."
Mitchell's lifelong friend, Chad Daybell of Provo-based Spring Creek Books, had been trying to persuade Mitchell to write a book for several years. Daybell, the book's editor and publisher, feels like Mitchell's story is one that strikes close to home for a lot of people nowadays.
"To me, it's a true hero's journey where you have a hero who takes a tumble in life and fights his way back to where he wants to be," Daybell said. "Scott didn't always have the life he wanted to have. I think he truly wanted to be a Hall of Famer and a Super Bowl champ, but he's happier where he is now. It's an inspiring view of how life can get you down but how you can also bounce back."
Mitchell's physical and emotional transformation took place on "The Biggest Loser," helping the strapping 6-foot-6 athlete not only drop 126 pounds and foster a much healthier lifestyle but, perhaps as importantly, gain a new perspective of self-awareness, acceptance and appreciation, which helped him find something that he'd had a hard time achieving — happiness.
"The real amazing journey has been that more so than this athlete and what I've done and how I've felt, it's been more an internal change and a transformation," Mitchell said. "It really came about from watching my dad die from being overweight. He had diabetes and it was all brought on from obesity."
Mitchell's father was 76 years old and lived in Arizona with Scott's mother, and Mitchell would visit him regularly and watched in anguish as his dad's health steadily deteriorated while his mom fought a difficult, losing battle trying to save him.
"Every time I'd go visit them for the last six years of his life, I'd see him deal with something that would put him in the hospital," Mitchell said. "I watched them amputate his leg, I watched him get gangrene, and I watched him get all the different illnesses that go with diabetes. And it was horrific. It's amazing what my mom did and what she put up with with my dad. And seeing that, I could see what my future was going to be and it didn't really look that great.
"When he died, we were in an intensive care unit, and this is the moment when my dad dies and I know that it's gonna happen, and it's a very surreal moment because it's the only dad you have and this is the moment, and it happens once in your life," Mitchell recalled. "And how do you make sense of this? How do you feel good about this? Especially after watching him go through what he had for the past six years, there's a sense of relief, but it was still a challenging thing.
"And they shut the sliding glass doors of the room we were in to give us some more privacy, and when they did these stickers of these butterflies appeared and when I saw these butterflies it hit me in the head somewhat that my dad was this caterpillar who was going into a cocoon and then he would come back someday as this beautiful butterfly. And it just gave me this peace about this whole thing, and then shortly thereafter, I miraculously found this show 'The Biggest Loser.' And I kind of felt like it was my dad's way of saying: 'You don't have to die like me to become a butterfly; here's a chance for you to find your own cocoon and become that butterfly.' So it's been a really incredible experience, and very soul-searching and very challenging."
Mitchell's story and football career have also been quite compelling. He grew up in Utah County, where he led his Springville High team to the state football championship and also starred in baseball and basketball for the Red Devils.
As a distant relative to legendary BYU football coach LaVell Edwards, who was a cousin of Mitchell's grandmother, the teenage Mitchell would practice with the Cougars' baseball team. So the manner in which he wound up playing football for the University of Utah — and not BYU — is a pretty amazing story in itself.
"I always wanted to go to BYU. There was not even a scent of Utah in any of this. There wasn't even another choice in my mind," Mitchell said. "LaVell came to my house on Dec. 1, 1985, and the reason I know that is December was the first month a coach could visit you personally in your home, so he wanted to be the first person in my home and he wanted to say 'You're our top recruit, and you are the person we want to come to BYU.' That's what he told me in my house, and he's sitting there with (offensive coordinator) Norm Chow.
"I mean, I went to all the BYU games; I was really good friends with (former BYU star) Gifford Nielsen, I was his roommate when I was younger and went to football camps. It was like, 'How cool is that? And I had ties to Coach (Gary) Pullins at BYU, and LaVell was a relative and I was a quarterback, I was the local hero, I was LDS. There's no way I'm not gonna go to BYU.
"And when (LaVell) told me that, I thought this should be it," he said. "But I had this pit in my stomach; there was something about it and I said, you know what, I know this is what I'm supposed to do and it just didn't feel right."
Mitchell felt conflicted for the next 2½ months leading up to National Letter of Intent Day.
"I kept trying to figure out OK, why do I feel this way? This is what I've always wanted, this is perfect," he recalled. "I can play both football and baseball, it's gonna be perfect. So I was in my room on a Monday night in the middle of February and signing date was that Wednesday, and I'm like 'Why am I still feeling this way?'
"I've kinda had these other schools, Utah and Stanford, coming around. So I was like, 'What do I do?' So I just went in my room and started to pray about it — I didn't know what to do and I just needed some help — and I was in the middle of praying and the phone rang. My mom yelled down in my room and said 'It's Coach (Jim) Fassel from the University of Utah.' And I was sitting there in my mind thinking 'Why do I want to talk to him right now when I'm trying to get an answer to my prayer?'
"I didn't connect the two and I reluctantly took the phone call, and about halfway through the conversation I just had this overwhelming sense of peace come to me, and I just said, 'This is where I need to go to school.' And it was so powerful and so sure that I knew I'd gotten an answer to my prayer that I didn't think about anything else," Mitchell said. "I didn't think about 'Oh my goodness, what are people going to think here? I'm from Utah County and I prayed to go to college and the Lord said 'Don't go to BYU?' I didn't even think about any of that. I just knew that I had a legitimate concern and I got an answer."
Mitchell had a couple of solid if not spectacular seasons for the Utes, throwing for 4,322 yards and 29 touchdowns in 1988 — when they capped their season with a rousing 57-28 victory over nationally ranked BYU — and throwing for 3,211 yards and 31 touchdowns in 1989.
Still, it wasn't quite the career he had envisioned for himself.
"And that's part of what my whole journey's about," he said. "Things happened to me not the way I wanted them to happen but the way I needed them to happen. And that was a real challenging lesson to learn in my life. There's a lot of questioning yourself along the way.
"I go to Utah and we don't ever win; we have six guys go to prison, the coach gets fired, and some kid named Ty Detmer ends up going to BYU after me and wins the Heisman Trophy — that would've been me.
"You have this feeling like this is what I should do, and then you kinda go out there and have to fight through it and figure it out a little bit. There are certainly moments where you question yourself; I certainly did. But I couldn't appreciate the wisdom in all of that," he said. "It really was the best thing for me in my life, but I couldn't see it until years later when I had life experience enough to appreciate the choices and things that I made and learned when I was at the University of Utah. … No question it was the very best thing for me, but at the time, you have those feelings and doubts.
"I grew up in Utah County and I just never really knew what I believed. And that's what I learned when I came here (to the U.); I want to know is this really true, is this really what I believe or not? I was put in an environment where it forced me or created a curiosity in me to really know and want to find out for myself, and I did. And then that dictated all the choices and decisions I made in my life after that. And I could see the wisdom in that because that's really the one thing that's helped me through all this and held me together is that testimony I have. And I couldn't see it at the time until many, many years later. … I was able to live my childhood dream and do some amazing things, but really the amazing part of my journey is what I found about myself inside. It really is."
Mitchell wound up being selected by the Miami Dolphins in the 1990 NFL Draft, and he spent three seasons as the understudy to legendary quarterback Dan Marino before Marino suffered a torn Achilles tendon. And suddenly, Mitchell was thrust into the starter's role in 1993.
On his first pass, he threw a pick-6, what he laughingly calls "still a Cleveland Browns record — a 97-yard interception return for a touchdown."
But he recovered in the second half of that game and wound up winning AFC Offensive Player of the Week honors for his efforts in the Dolphins' victory. He parlayed his performance the remainder of that season into a lucrative free agent contract with the Detroit Lions, where he enjoyed a couple of superb seasons and helped get his team to the NFL playoffs four times. But success eluded them once they got there.
He spent five seasons in Detroit but was eventually benched and couldn't find another starting job in the NFL again.
And that only added to his feelings of disappointment and inadequacy, feelings he carried around for years until "The Biggest Loser" helped him stop feeling like he was indeed "The Biggest Loser."
"What I came to terms with and what I realized was I was so wrapped in all of the things that haven't happened," he said. "I hadn't won the Heisman Trophy, I wasn't in the Hall of Fame, I didn't win a Super Bowl — and I was so focused on the negative disappointments in my life, and it consumed me. There were days where I wouldn't leave the house. It was just so hard for me to deal with.
"And that's part of what happened on the show. I literally had a moment where I felt like I was tired of this, I'm tired of feeling perturbed and in pain, and I wanted to quit the show. I said this is too much, this is it, I'm done and I'm just gonna walk out the door and I'm not gonna tell anyone that I left.
"And I had this thought come to me that 'If you quit, you'll have to live with this for the rest of your life. So just figure out a way to get through this day.' And then the next morning was when it flooded into me and it was, 'You find joy in all of the sorrow in everything you've been through,’ ” he realized. "And all that you've been through is what's made you the person that you are. You're a lot tougher, a lot stronger, a lot more compassionate; you're more giving, you're more loving because of everything you've been through. And that's made you a really amazing person and you need to learn to love yourself, which I didn't.
"And once I was able to do that, I realized I have this amazing life; it was right there in front of me, and it was some of the most simple things that I hadn't even recognized, as simple as the sun coming up every day. It was such a faith-promoting, awe-inspiring moment, and it happens every single day — every 24 hours it happens. So I had all these moments that I was missing, and it was so wonderful and could mean so much and I could get so much and feel so much from it if I would just allow myself to do it.
"And so I just stopped trying to get to a destination and I just started to become a person that's just being in the moment and just enjoying the moment and enjoying the whole journey and appreciating how wonderful the journey of life really is."
Going on the TV show and writing "Alive Again" has certainly served as a catharsis for Mitchell, who has been busy doing motivational speaking and, with his background, experience, knowledge and ability to articulate, is hoping to begin a career in sportscasting. He'd love to serve as an analyst for the Pac-12 Network.
"I think this whole experience has been that for me," he said. "I had a lot of closure, a lot of clarity to my life, a lot of things certainly making a lot of sense to me. I've been able to tie my whole life together.
"I really feel like hey, I've been part of having that closure and part of becoming alive again. I feel hope in my life, I feel excited about the next step, and I'm not weighed down by the disappointments of my life.
"That was the irony of all this for me was I didn't recognize that I had died emotionally, because that's what had already happened," Mitchell said. "I didn't notice it or see it until I'd actually been on the show, and I saw the physical side of me but I wasn't aware that I had already thrown in the towel. There was this self-awareness that happened to me. … I was able to see 'Whoa, Scott, you've just kinda quit. You've given up.’ ”
But now that he's "Alive Again," there's no more giving up for Scott Mitchell from now on.
EMAIL: rhollis@desnews.com