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Inside The Huskies

Ex-Husky Walk-On Hartineaux Orders Serving Of Rice

The linebacker spent two seasons at the UW with Kalen DeBoer teams.
Dan Raley|
Austin Harnetiaux is shown at the 2024 national championship game.
Austin Harnetiaux is shown at the 2024 national championship game. | USA Today

For the University of Washington football team, Austin Harnetiaux was the last of a dying breed.

A walk-on who fully believed he could land a Husky scholarship with grit and hard work and play a lot.

He intended to do what his good friend Edefuan Ulofoshio had accomplished before him in Montlake, which was work his way up as a walk-on linebacker and into the mix as a steady contributor. He turned down scholarship opportunities with the service academies to go this route.

With his rugged frame and movie-star looks, Harnetiaux gave it two seasons. Played in five UW games, mostly on special teams. Was named 2023 Scout Team MVP.

In the end, he went elsewhere, first to Nevada and now Rice, to get that scholarship, to get on the field regularly, to even become a starter.

"It's almost taboo and slowly dying because of the rev share," Harnetiaux said on the podcast The G5 Hive, referring to the classic walk-on who proves everyone wrong and becomes part of the romanticism of the game.

Entering his fifth season of college ball, Harnetiaux comes to Rice after two seasons at Nevada, where he appeared in 25 games and started three times. He finished with 81 tackles, including 3 tackles for loss, plus two pass deflections and a forced fumble.

In hindsight, the Seattle product and Seattle Prep alum initially might have gone to an FCS school, such as a Big Sky entry, just to get on the field right away with a lot of snaps.

Yet he has no regrets. He spent two seasons with Kalen DeBoer's UW staff and went to the CFP national championship games. He played two more seasons at Nevada for Jeff Choate, who was the Huskies' defensive-line coach in 2014-15 and employs former UW quarterback Keith Price and one-time Husky outside linebacker Tevis Bartlett on his staff.

Former Husky linebacker Austin Harnetiaux is at Rice to finish his playing career.
Former Husky linebacker Austin Harnetiaux is at Rice to finish his playing career. | USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect

"I'm so thankful for my time at the U-Dub and Nevada," Harnetiaux said. "I think both spots taught me something entirely different."

He couldn't crack the UW's linebacker top six of Ulofoshio, Alphonzo Tuputala, Carson Bruener, Ralen Goforth, Drew Fowler and Deven Bryant.

At Rice, Harnetiaux becomes the second Husky football player to transfer to the Houston school in six years, following place-kicker Tim Horn, who finished up there in 2024.

He's in graduate school at Rice, in the MBA program, going there for academics as much as athletics. He's determined to pile up 100 tackles or more and bring the Owls, coming off a 3-9 record, a winning season.

"Now it's time to shove all the chips in the middle and try to squeeze as much out of it as I can," he said.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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