Steve Milton: Ten things to know about Bo Levi Mitchell

Although it's still nearly four months before training camp opens, Bo Levi Mitchell took over as the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' starting quarterback after signing a three-year deal and making his first public appearance Tuesday at a media conference in the team's locker-room.

Here are 10 things you might not know about the Ticats new pivot.

• During 2018, when he was the league's and the Grey Cup's top player, Mitchell became the fastest quarterback ever to reach 60 wins in his career (72 games). In 2019 and 2021, pectoral, fibula, and shoulder injuries cost him 14 total games and he said he might consider retirement. But Mitchell says he's now fully healthy: My knees don't hurt, my elbows don't hurt, my shoulders don't hurt." He's already working with new strength and conditioning coach Marcellus Bowman.

• Mitchell is from Katy, a Texas a city of 21,000 which was originally surrounded by rice fields but is now more urban and part of the greater Houston area. While quarterbacking Katy High School (established in 1898) to the 2007 state title, he threw for 37 touchdowns and just four interceptions on the way to a 16-0 record. Katy's Legacy Stadium can seat 12,000 and is one of the most expensive, and up-to-date high school football facilities in Texas, a state full of well-known high school stadia. Other notable natives of Katy include actresses Renee Zellweger and Janeane Garofolo, country singer Clint Black and NFL quarterback Andy Dalton. I was bred for moments like this, going to a high school like that," he said Tuesday.

• In Hamilton, for the first time in his pro career, Mitchell will have another Katy native as a teammate: ascendant place-kicker Seth Small.

• Mitchell's nickname is Gunslinger," given to him in high school by an uncle because of his bold playing style.

• The new Ticat quarterback and his wife, Madison Hilpert Mitchell, met at Eastern Washington University and have two daughters, five-year-old Ele and three-year-old Lakelyn.

• Like many professional athletes, Mitchell is proud of his large number of varied tattoos, including a full sleeve on one arm, a half sleeve on the other. He says his favourite tattoo is the one that forms his wedding ring.

• Mitchell opened his U.S. college career at Southern Methodist, starting all 19 games for two years, but transferred to Eastern Washington - which had originally tried to recruit him out of high school - and led the Eagles to the 2011 National Football Championship (formerly Division 1-AA) title. He engineered the winning drive over Delaware in the final four minutes and was named championship-game MVP. He studied interdisciplinary liberal arts at Eastern Washington. After going undrafted by the NFL, he signed in Calgary as a third-stringer in 2012.

• Mitchell took over from Kevin Glenn and Drew Tate as starting quarterback for the Stampeders in 2013, and has amassed 32,541 career passing yards, most-ever by a Stampeder, and the 15th-highest in CFL history. With even an average season this year, he could move into the top 12 ahead of former Ticat head coach Kent Austin. His 242.9 passing yards per game ranks ninth-highest in CFL history.

• In a 2021 article on the football website 3Down Nation, head coach Dave Dickenson and CFL-all-time quarterback Doug Flutie, both indicated that Mitchell was the top quarterback in franchise history. In the early 1990s, Flutie started a three-decade run of superb pivots in Calgary that included Jeff Garcia, Dickenson, Henry Burris, Glenn and Mitchell.

• Mitchell will turn 33 in March and is three and a half years older than Dane Evans, whom he will replace as No. 1 Ticat quarterback. But if all three of the other starting quarterbacks in the CFL East are still with their 2022 teams, Mitchell would be the youngest in the division. Montreal's Trevor Harris (pending free agent) will be 37 in May, Toronto's McLeod Bethel-Thompson (pending free agent) turns 35 in July and former Ticat Jeremiah Masoli, who's under contract in Ottawa, will be 35 in August.

Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com