The Sordid Nature of High School and College Football Seeps into the Ivy League Campus of Yale University

And High School Football Doesn’t Get Off Easy Either

Last fall a story came to light about how Yale Quarterback Patrick Witt decided to forego an interview for a Rhodes Scholar award and instead play in the annual Harvard-Yale football game.  Now details are coming out, including one that he really didn’t forgo the interview at all.  It was canceled by the Rhodes Scholar people because Mr. Witt had been accused of sexual assault.

We will forgo any comment on the charge, as there is no final resolution and the charge was made through Yale’s informal complain process.  However the other details in the story are pretty damning against college football in general and Yale in particular.  For example, there is this.

Days after Witt’s withdrawal, The Times reported that Yale’s coach, Tom Williams, had invented parts of his résumé, including a supposed Rhodes candidacy that he had dropped two decades earlier in favor of a chance at a professional football career — an experience that he said gave him a unique ability to advise Witt on his tough choice. Williams resigned in December.

And Mr. Witt couldn’t help but play up his story, with this fiction.

Witt discussed his athletic achievements, his happiness at having transferred to Yale, his N.F.L. ambitions and the conflict between the Rhodes interview and the Harvard game.

“With the Rhodes scholarship, you know, I think that’s just kind of the mold that I try to live by as a student-athlete,” Witt said.

Yale is not covered with glory here

University officials would not discuss other issues, like why Yale did not officially alert the Rhodes Trust of the complaint; what it did upon learning the candidacy had been suspended; and whether Yale ultimately decided not to endorse Witt before he withdrew on his own.

But anyone who has ever come into contact with the Yales of the world knows their arrogance knows no boundaries, and that they feel they are a world unto themselves unanswerable to the public at large.

As for Mr. Witt, his football history shows that basically his parent shopped around for a high school where Mr. Witt could play football and show off his football talents.

Patrick and his older brother, Jeff, transferred from one Atlanta-area high school to another so that Jeff — who would later play quarterback at Harvard — could play in a more pass-oriented offense. But after Jeff graduated from Parkview High School in Lilburn, Ga., the team relied on a star running back, so Patrick rarely got to throw.

The family moved to Dallas, where Patrick enrolled at a pass-happy football powerhouse, Highland Park High School. When it became clear he would not start, Patrick transferred within weeks to Wylie High School, in a Dallas suburb, his fourth school in three years.

Exactly how any parent would do such a thing to their child, essentially disrupt his life by moving to four different high schools because of athletics is difficult to comprehend.  And notice that none of the high schools seemed to be bothered by all this.  But why should they, after all none of its seems to bother Yale.