NFF National Scholar-Athletes

Patrick Witt

  • School
    Yale
  • Induction
    2011

Performing at the highest levels on the field and in the classroom, few students can match the academic and athletic excellence achieved by Patrick Witt, who becomes Yale's 11th NFF National Scholar-Athlete.

Endorsed by Yale for both the Rhodes Scholarship and the Mitchell Scholarship, the Atlanta native was a 2010 Academic All-Ivy League selection, and he made the NACDA Academic All-Star Team. An Ivy League Honor Roll member, Witt won the Francis Gordon Brown Prize as the junior who most closely approaches the standards of intellectual ability, high manhood, capacity for leadership and service to Yale. Witt is also a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma International Honor Society.

Twice named the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week this season, Witt has completed 113-of-193 passes for 1,377 yards, and 11 touchdowns with two rushing scores. He led the Ivy League in five statistical categories in 2010: passing yards (2,216), yards per game (246.2), attempts (351), completions (212) and completion percentage (60.4) en route to claiming Second Team All-Ivy League honors. The first transfer student to immediately win the starting quarterback job since before World War II, he became one of just four quarterbacks in Yale history to throw for 400 yards in a single game, which he did against Georgetown on Sept. 18, 2010. He claims 5,042 passing yards and 31 touchdowns in his career as a Bulldog.

Witt served as a summer associate for the Boston Consulting Group in 2011 and at Hedgeye Risk Management in 2010. He writes as a staff reporter for the Yale Daily News; serves on the football team's Leadership Council; and assists as a programming committee member of the Intercultural Affairs Council. A member of Athletes in Action, Witt works as a high school mentor, a youth counselor at Lighthouse Community Boys' Home, and a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, and he has helped at the Safe Haven Homeless Shelter. He is currently a J.D. candidate at the Harvard University Law School and expected to graduate in 2017.