Yale Quarterback Patrick Witt Faces Decision Between Playing Harvard, Interviewing for Rhodes Scholarship

by Jashvina Shah on Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 12:03PM

Two years ago, senior Yale quarterback Patrick Witt transferred from the University of Nebraska for academic reasons. Now, he’ll have to do decide between football and academics again.

Just two days after beating Columbia, Witt found out that he was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, the Yale Daily News reports. As a finalist, Witt will need to fly down to Georgia for an interview, which is currently scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 19 at 8 a.m. However, kickoff for the Yale-Harvard game is at noon the same day. The interview is scheduled to end by 8:30 a.m., but it would still take Witt two hours to fly back up to New York and then additional time to get to Yale.

“It’s still very new, it’s still very fresh just finding out this information,” Witt told the Yale Daily News. ”So I need to kind of reevaluate. If the Rhodes Committee is willing to work with me, in a perfect world, I can interview first thing in the morning and get on a flight to be back in time for the game on Saturday. But I don’t know if that will be possible.”

The Rhodes Scholarship would allow Witt, who has a 3.91 GPA, to study at Oxford for two or three years. So far this season, Witt has thrown for 1,393 yards, 11 touchdowns and eight interceptions.