Newly acquired Toronto Argonauts defensive end Khalif Mitchell says he won’t be reporting to his new team because of a business opportunity he has on the West coast.
“I’m not going to Toronto,” Mitchell told Sportsnet Thursday. “I’ve already made up my mind, I’m not going to Toronto.”
Mitchell said the reason he won’t go to Toronto has to do with a business opportunity he wants to pursue.
“The reasons for not going to Toronto (is because) off the field, in this off-season right now, I started a business opportunity that I haven’t had and wanted for a long time,” Mitchell said.
The Argos acquired Mitchell on April 2 from the B.C. Lions in exchange for defensive end Adrian Awasom and the rights to a negotiation list player.
Mitchell said that at the moment it’s not possible to relocate his business to the East coast involving an herbal drink.
“As professionals, we don’t make a lot of money in the CFL, but we get to play a great game for a little amount of time. And the relationships we can build playing this game is what I’ve actually taken advantage of and I actually have an opportunity now where we have a nice herbal drink going on and I don’t want to lose the opportunity and I want to see it grow.
“I’m a natural athlete; I don’t take no supplements and to be a part of something that’s growing, a part of not taking stimulants, any growth in that development or in that avenue I’m for it.”
The 27-year-old from Virginia Beach, Va., has spent the last three seasons with the Lions and prior to that played two years with the San Francisco 49ers in the National Football League, so he has adjusted to living on the West coast of North America.
“I really would just love to stay here on the West coast,” Mitchell explained. “I played for San Francisco for two years, and you know what? I’m accustomed to the Pacific Ocean. I’m accustomed to everything that comes with being on the West coast – the time difference, the people, the style of life because east and west styles of life are different.”
Mitchell, who has 54 tackles and eight sacks in 34 career CFL games, won the Grey Cup and was a CFL all-star in 2011, but in 2012 he made headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The six-foot-five, 316-pounder was suspended two games for hyperextending the arm of Edmonton Eskimos offensive lineman Simeon Rottier during a game. He was also fined on two separate occasions – once for making throat-slash gestures and another for tweeting something that was deemed derogatory toward Chinese people. Mitchell later apologized for the tweet.
Regardless of how the rest of the off-season unfolds, Mitchell believes refusing to join the Argos is the right decision.
“I know without a shadow of a doubt that this life course that I’m on is the right one,” Mitchell said.
“Is it sad that I had to leave B.C.? Yes, it’s very sad, but I can’t leave this time zone because at the end of the day I don’t have the same opportunities off the field in the same atmosphere as I would going to the East coast.”
Mitchell suggested that he wouldn’t mind playing for one of the two teams in Alberta – the Calgary Stampeders or Edmonton Eskimos – and added that a move to Saskatchewan would be too far.
“I want to have a new opportunity. B.C. Lions and Toronto Argonauts, I don’t know if many people understand it, but they have the same owner. David Braley’s a great guy, but he’s the same owner of both teams. That’s not a new start, that’s not a new beginning,” Mitchell explained.
“To have the opportunity to go somewhere new, and to have the opportunity to go to a new owner, a new general manager, a new team, a new outlook is something more beneficial for me in this area of life. Staying over here is way more beneficial than football. Football is only going to last me so many more years, but this job is going to last me all the years after.”
