Tobias Dorzon's Successful Cooking Career Is Preceded by a Reputable NFL Career
Published April 4 2022, 2:36 p.m. ET
Before maintaining a notable career in televised cooking, professional chef Tobias Dorzon was once a successful NFL player. Tobias has made several appearances on Food Network shows, winning four times on Guy's Grocery Games, a cooking game show hosted by Flavortown Ambassador Guy Fieri. As of March 2022, Tobias is a contestant on Season 3 of another Fieri joint called Tournament of Champions.
As the name suggests, Tournament of Champions is a seven-part tournament that pits chefs against each other in single-elimination bracket matches. Contestants compete in cook-offs where they must create a standout dish using a variety of ingredients.
Tobias is currently competing in the show, pushing his culinary skills even further — but before he ran laps throughout the kitchen, Tobias also had a career in professional football.
Tobias Dorzon was a football player before he was a 'Tournament of Champions' chef.
Long before he began making a name for himself as a chef, Tobias had aspirations of becoming a football player. According to The Manual, Tobias attended Jackson State University in Mississippi with an athletic scholarship. He would go on to compete within the National Football League and the Canadian Football League. Reportedly, he was part of the Tennessee Titans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers throughout his football career. He eventually retired from football in 2012 in pursuit of a different path.
"That was my end-all, be-all, the only thing I wanted to," Dorzon told The Manual. "Just like anybody that's great at something, I felt like, at a point, once I got to Canada ... if I wasn't the best at what I actually did, it was time for me to figure something else out."
Tobias then made the pivot to cooking, attending the Culinary School at the Art Institute of Washington and even studying abroad in Sicily. Now, he is preparing to open his own restaurant in Maryland. As a Food Network personality, he is even professed friends with Guy Fieri himself, according to an interview with Mashed.
Through it all, he uses his experience with football and channels it into his cooking.
"Being able to have that competitive edge playing football, I took that to the culinary world," Tobias told The Manual. "I wouldn't say that chefs don't have that edge, but to have that competitive nature, that was something that football really prepared me for."
New episodes of Tournament of Champions premiere every Sunday on the Food Network.