Fans won’t have to wait for the NFL season to spend their Sunday with Valdosta native Malcolm Mitchell.

At 9 a.m. Sunday, July 30, Mitchell will be be the subject of ESPN’s award-winning newsmagazine program E:60.

“We found Malcolm’s story compelling,” E:60 coordinating producer Ben Houser said through email. “It isn’t often that an athlete will focus on an academic weakness and embrace it in such a way that it becomes a tremendous strength. Malcolm Mitchell accomplished that at Georgia when he wrote, ‘The Magician’s Hat’.

“His story was best captured by Patriots owner Robert Kraft in our E:60 feature when he said ‘He (Malcolm) is a great role model for young people, especially young people who maybe grew up like himself and maybe didn’t develop the best reading skills’. It is clear Malcolm puts a great value on both his football AND writing careers. That was a story we wanted to share with our E:60 viewers.”

E:60 premiered on ESPN in October of 2007 as a prime time newsmagazine show reporting on subjects ranging from the toxicity of playing fields in Bhopal to the safety of artificial soccer fields.

On May 14, E:60 launched its weekly Sunday morning format, making for a regular, year-round timeslot.

According to a statement in May, E:60, hosted by Jeremy Schaap and Bob Ley, not only continues to deliver its signature storytelling, but it also introduced a new and diverse team of journalists and feature stories from ESPN’s award-winning Outside the Lines team.

Today, E:60’s feature story covers someone local football fans are quite familiar with in Mitchell.

Once a two-way star at Valdosta High, Mitchell went on to make a name for himself by authoring the children’s book, ‘The Magician’s Hat,’ and advocating for literacy while playing football at the University of Georgia.

Mitchell’s star continued its rise in the public eye when he was drafted by New England in the fourth round of the 2016 NFL Draft. He went on to cap off a solid rookie season with a six-catch, 70 yard performance in the Patriots come-from-behind victory in Super Bowl LI.

When telling Mitchell’s story, E:60 — which has received 11 Emmy Awards, 60 Sports Emmy nominations, seven Edward R. Murrow awards and the RFK Journalism Award, among many other honors for its incisive storytelling and groundbreaking journalism — will travel back to Mitchell’s time at Valdosta.

A promotional clip released by the E:60 shows Mitchell as unaware as his status as a highly-coveted recruit despite receiving a call from coaches Jeremy Pruitt and Nick Saban with a scholarship offer from Alabama.

“At the time they said their names and I promise you, it was like talking to a wall because I had no idea who they were,” Mitchell says in the clip.

In high school, Malcolm Mitchell (@Money_Mitch26) was a highly coveted recruit, though he didn’t know it. See Malcolm’s story Sunday, 9am ET pic.twitter.com/utlXeaHQjb

— E:60 (@E60) July 28, 2017

Derrick Davis is the sports editor at the Valdosta Daily Times.