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I was born and grew up in Fitzgerald, way down in south Georgia. It was a mill town and my family ran the cotton mill. My grandfather was mayor many times and my family felt deeply rooted to that spot.

I grew up in the suburbs north of Atlanta. I had an amazing childhood, and I still go back to my home in Atlanta often.

My dad wanted me to play football so bad, he took me to Washington High School on the west side of Atlanta because they were number one. They never lost.

I've come to realize how much it really was a part of my upbringing, the Georgia part. We were away from town. It was just dirt and trees and spouses. And a lot of kids - my cousins, who were all like brothers and sisters to me - just a lot of kids at one time.

I was a young man working in Omaha, Nebraska, in the mid-1960s when I received a call, and I was summoned to Atlanta to work at WSB. It was, for me, the beginning of a real education about the South.

I arrived in Hollywood and lived much of my life in America, but the fans did not really know me.

The Georgia Dome was my home field, brother. There's no question about it. I played my first football game there as an Atlanta Falcon.

Georgia was a great place to live, but I wanted to get out because I knew the opportunities for what I was doing - stand-up comedy and eventually acting - were in Los Angeles.

I grew up half the time in a small town called Mart, Texas, and half the time in L.A., because I was acting. My high school was crazy about football.

A lot of things happened in a lot of places. And to see how well it was handled in Atlanta. There are a lot of reasons for Atlanta being a special town in the Civil Rights era.