“Football was a huge part of my life for a long period of time,” Vittori says. “It just got to the point where I thought my time would be more valuably spent doing a number of other things that playing football here would not allow me to do.”
In the interest of full disclosure and with the necessary pre-requisites about apologizing for shameless self-promotion, I must admit that Vittori is my co-host on the halftime show on 95.3 FM WHRB. I’m your typical media idiot—I did play football in high school, albeit unsuccessfully—so Jayson offers an invaluable perspective of the Harvard team that I simply do not have.
With Harvard’s record right now standing at 8-0 and Murphy’s squad primed for a Herculean match-up of Ivy League undefeateds this week with the University of Pennsylvania, Vittori—who has only missed one game this season, when the Crimson was at Lafayette in faraway Easton, Pa.—waits with eager anticipation for the weekend.
“I’m in a unique situation because I live with five guys on the team,” Vittori says, referring to his blockmates Brian Edwards, Ricky Williamson, James Harvey, Max McKibben, and Garrett Schires. “Nothing makes me happier than to go to a game and see them play well. This run right now is amazing, and it seems to be something possibly even more special than when we went undefeated in 2001.
“Four years ago my roommates and I got a championship ring for simply being on the roster,” Vittori says. “Now, they are truly earning it, and I couldn’t be more supportive.”
In the end, all three of the ex-footballers say that they don’t regret leaving for a second. Yet, that doesn’t in any way cheapen what their roommates and classmates are doing on the field. It also doesn’t in any way mean that their classmates shouldn’t have an opportunity to compete for a Division I-AA National Championship like nearly every other Division I-AA football player in the country besides those in the Ivy League can.
“I’d be lying if I told you that picking one off and taking it to the house against Yale like my buddy Gary Sonkur did last year doesn’t still give me goosebumps,” Martignetti says. “But I’m very happy and comfortable with my decision to leave football in my past.”
And God knows I am too, for all three of these guys, because I might not know them each as well as I do.
But in the interest of full disclosure one more time, I have to admit that I’m particularly thrilled with Freddie’s decision to quit because he’s become one of my best friends in the time since that day during his freshman spring. At the end of this summer when he could have been back at camp practicing with his fellow teammates in preparation for the possibility of an Ivy League Championship, instead Freddie and I were catching bluefish, going tubing, and attending Patriots games day after day. And if Freddie was still beholden to Murphy and his coaching staff, my Harvard experience wouldn’t even compare.