Fitzpatrick sole Ivy player tapped for East West Shrine Game and Hula Bowl

The NFL Draft is still four months away, but Ryan Fitzpatrick is ready to prove that he’s worthy of professional consideration.

The 2004 Harvard football captain and Ivy Player of the Year has accepted invitations to play in two senior bowls in the month of January, Crimson Sports Information released this week. Fitzpatrick will play in the East West Shrine Game in San Francisco on Jan. 15 and the Hula Bowl in Kihei, Hawaii, on Jan. 22. Both games will be nationally televised on ESPN and ESPN2, respectively.

These bowls will provide an opportunity for coaches, scouts and media outside of New England and the Ivy League to see Fitzpatrick play. Although professional scouts came to the majority of Harvard’s games this season, the senior bowls will pit the Crimson’s second all-time leading passer against some of the top players in both Division I-A and I-AA.

In an interview prior to the Harvard-Yale game, Fitzpatrick was already anticipating the competition he might face from fellow quarterbacks on the East rosters.

“This year more than in years past there isn’t really a clear-cut No. 1 or No. 2 quarterback heading into the draft,” Fitzpatrick said, “so I think a lot of those players are going to take their invitations and play in all these games.”

Of the quarterbacks attending the Shrine game, however, Fitzpatrick is the only one from Division I-AA. In that bowl, he will split time with Stefan Lefors of Louisville and Kyle Orton of Purdue. The West roster boasts Hawaii’s Timmy Chang and Oregon State’s Derek Anderson.

Fitzpatrick will also be the only Ivy representative at both bowls.