Interesting road for Witt

Saturday will be a special day as Yale quarterback Patrick Witt's parents will be able to see one of their sons playing in The Game.

"What is kind of tough for my folks is he never got to play in the Harvard/Yale game. He was injured and didn’t get to play in that game. It was something my folks wanted for me."

It's been an interesting second season at Yale for Witt to say the least. He has a chance to finish with the third most passing yards of any Yale quarterback this season but he also has as many touchdown passes (12) as interceptions (12).

Witt is a go for broke player at quarterback which is going to lead to his share of interceptions.

"That is something I have been working on this entire year," Witt said. "Obviously they happen. There is no quarterback who has thrown the number of times that I have who hasn’t gotten picked off a few times. Some of them are flukes, those happen but the ones I can correct (with) the decision making are something I (criticize) myself about. I am in there watching as much film as I can trying not to be surprised by anything. I know with the success we have had through the air, a lot of teams are mixing up coverages. Despite all my preparation, I’ll go into the game and see something completely different. That is something Coach (Brian) Stark and I have worked on, expect the unexpected."

I have more on Witt in a story running in tomorrow's edition of the Register. Much of the focus will be on how he has fit in with his Yale teammates since he transferred from Nebraska. I have been struck by the number of e-mails and anonymous comments on this blog I get regarding Witt and they tend not to be of the positive variety.

I didn't have room to get Yale coach Tom Williams' thoughts about why Witt draws the reaction he does and how much has to do with the fact that those outside the program view him as not being an original Yalie. There's no question that the amount of hype he generated when it became known that he was coming to Yale could have drawn some resentment. He does seem to have matured a little bit from last year and has displayed toughness on the field playing through a variety of injuries.

"The biggest thing that has happened with Pat is being here for a full year and getting to know the guys better, spending time with them in the offseason and they got to see him work," Williams said. "When you come in from another program, they haven’t seen you work, sweat and that kind of stuff. When you have a year to show them what you are about, it makes a difference.

"I remember when Glyn Milburn transferred back to Stanford from Oklahoma (when Williams was a player at Stanford). Who is this guy? He shows up, a highly-touted guy. Everybody is jocking him, we don’t know anything about the guy. You can’t just walk into the locker room and be the best guy, the best player when nobody knows what you can do. There was some of that from players, we took some shots and tried to hit him to see what he was all about. At the end of the day, he was a great guy and it takes time for that to happen."