the 49ers and attended training camp, but after being slowed in camp by an illness he was cut by the team prior to the season. Upon being cut by the 49ers, Mitchell chose to close the book on this playing career even though he may have been able to pursue an opportunity in the fledgling World Football League, saying, "I had a chance, whatever happened, good or bad, and I figured a guy's got to work someday." Coaching career Alabama Mitchell decided to return to Alabama to attend law school in the fall of 1973. When he asked coach Bryant for help in finding a campus job to make ends meet while he worked on his graduate degree, Bryant instead offered him a full-time coaching position. In giving up his law school plans to accept the offer to coach defensive ends, Mitchell became the first African-American assistant coach for the Crimson Tide. He was also the youngest coach to have been hired by the school. In addition to coaching, he was instrumental in the recruiting of top African-American players to play football at Alabama. One player whom Mitchell helped recruit was Ozzie Newsome, who went on to have a Hall of Fame career. In Mitchell's first year of coaching at Alabama, the team compiled an 11–1 record and won the national championship in addition to the SEC championship. Over each of the next two seasons, they matched that 11–1 record, added two more SEC titles and finished inside the top-five in the polls. In 1976, which would be Mitchell's last with the team, they fell off a bit with a 9–3 record, but they still remained in the top-fifteen nationwide. Mitchell helped develop Leroy Cook who was a two-time All-America selection drafted in the 10th round of the 1976 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys and selected as one of two defensive ends on the All-time Alabama team named by Sports Illustrated in 2006. Arkansas In early 1977, Mitchell accepted a position coaching defensive ends at the University of Arkansas under Lou Holtz, after deciding the move was "at least horizontal". Following his first season with the Razorbacks in which the team went 11–1 and beat second-ranked Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, Holtz gushed, In the course of the six years Mitchell would spend at Arkansas, the team compiled a record of 54–16–2, won a Southwest Conference championship, played in