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New york times A Receiving Prospect Has His Mother in His Corner
By KAREN CROUSE
AVENTURA, Fla. — One day during his sophomore season at the University of South Florida, Carlton Mitchell pulled on a pair of sweat pants that had once belonged to the boxer Antonio Tarver, a family friend.
Some of the hand-me-downs that Mitchell receives from Tarver, a former light-heavyweight champion, still have their store tags attached. But this tracksuit had clearly been worn. When Mitchell dug his hands into the pockets, he found $1,000 in hundreds.
In the lead-up to this week’s N.F.L. draft, Mitchell has been like that wad of bills in his pocket: an unexpected find for the league’s talent evaluators, a pleasant surprise.
With a 40-yard-dash time of 4.49 seconds at the scouting combine in February, Mitchell flew onto N.F.L. teams’ radar. And at South Florida’s pro day last month, he continued to impress, improving that 40 result in front of a group that included Giants Coach Tom Coughlin.
Mitchell is 6 feet 3 inches and 215 pounds, with winged feet and hands so big they swallow most that he shakes. Last season, as a junior, he had 40 catches for 706 yards and 4 touchdowns.
If Mitchell’s physical gifts are the bait, some receiver-starved team may decide to reel him in in large part because of his character, perhaps as early as the second round. After he found the money in Tarver’s discarded sweat pants, there was never any doubt in his mind what he would do.
“It felt better giving it back to him,” he said. “It wouldn’t have felt right spending it.”
Speaking by telephone last week, Tarver said: “It was forgotten money. He didn’t have to give it back, but Carlton’s just that type of kid.”
Tarver and Mitchell are not related, but there is a blood connection. Both have the same strong woman in their corner; Mitchell’s mother, Angela, a nurse anesthetist in Tampa, has worked as a cut man for Tarver, the first fighter to knock out Roy Jones Jr.
She got her start in boxing several years ago when a doctor heard her talking about the sport in the break room and asked if she had any interest in working a bout in Tampa.
Tarver acknowledged that he was not initially keen on having a woman in his corner, but came around after he saw Angela Mitchell keep a local boxer in a match that he eventually won.
She raised Mitchell, 22, and his sister by herself after her divorce from Carl Mitchell, who played professional basketball for more than 10 years in Europe. One of the few predivorce memories Mitchell said he had of them as a family was a trip to the zoo when he was 6 when he chased — and caught — a squirrel, which then bit him.
His mother confirmed the story. “That’s when I knew he’s a heck of an athlete,” she said.
Angela Mitchell’s shifts at the hospital required her to rise before dawn, so Mitchell learned to set his alarm for 6 a.m. every weekday so he could shuffle into her room and talk with her for 30 minutes while she fixed her hair and applied her makeup.
They would discuss the news of the day. Sometimes, Mitchell’s mother would read him newspaper accounts of people who were in trouble, and they would talk about how and where they went wrong.
“I’d ask him, ‘What would you do different?’ or ‘How would you handle this situation?’ ” Angela Mitchell said.
During his freshman year in high school, Mitchell surprised his mother by announcing he was trying out for the football team.
“I walked off laughing,” she said. “I didn’t even think he knew the rules. Then he came home and said: ‘Guess what, Mom? I made the team!’ I was shocked. I said, ‘What position?’ ”
Mitchell started out as the punter. But in one of his first games, he leapt to retrieve a high snap and took off running. When he returned to the sideline, he said, the coach turned to him and said, “Son, do you want to play some receiver?”
When Mitchell decided to forgo his final season at South Florida to make himself available for the draft, he heard from a lot of people who thought he was making a mistake. They told him that he would have a chance to grow into a first-round pick if he stayed in college for another year of seasoning. Mitchell was unbowed.
“I’m not a follower,” he said. “I travel to the beat of my own drummer. I know what I want in life, and I just feel like this is my time.”
Tarver says that the people who suggest Mitchell is setting himself up to fail are, in effect, helping him succeed.
“Sometimes, you need the naysayers,” Tarver said. “If you have everybody picking your coat, sometimes you take shortcuts.”
Mitchell spent most of February and March working out in Miami, a short walk from a beach and a nightlife that he said he forsook to focus on perfecting his routes, decreasing his dropped passes and improving his diet.
“I learned from being around boxers that one night of drinking cancels out two weeks of working out,” Mitchell said.
He may avoid the social scene, but he is not antisocial. In fact, Mitchell has the same outgoing personality as his mother.
“In the elevator, if you make eye contact, we’re about to talk,” he said, laughing.
He grows serious when he talks about his mother’s influence on his life.
“She’s always been my main motivation,” Mitchell said. “I always try to do the right thing for her. I don’t ever want to make her look bad.”
Angela Mitchell will be proud to see her son drafted, but no more so than she was the day she received the call from Tarver about the money Mitchell returned that Tarver had not even missed.
“I was just like, ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ ” she said. “He didn’t have any money, and he would do that? I always taught him to do the right thing. I told him, ‘You have to look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of who you are.’ ”
Her voice cracked. “I guess Carlton was listening,” she said.
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