Hasselbach Started for Broncos in 1999 Super Bowl, but not for UW

Four plays.

Into that number, you can neatly fit Harald Hasselbach's entire University of Washington football career.

Over five seasons.

Husky fans never got to know him.

"I'm sure they felt I was a bust at the University of Washington," Hasselbach said. "I just didn't play. I take full responsibility for that. I just had a lot of growing up to do."

Nine years after leaving Seattle, the 6-foot-7, 270-pound defensive end started for the Denver Broncos in a 34-19 victory over the Atlanta Falcons at Super Bowl XXXIII in Miami.

The year before that, Hasselbach came off the bench for the Broncos and played most of Super Bowl XXXII in a 31-24 win over the Green Bay Packers in San Diego.

He was a super football player, just not for the Huskies.

What in the name of the Montlake Cut happened?

To begin with, he was not the prototypical football player.

Hasselbach, the son of a research scientist who took tropical assignments, was born in The Netherlands and he lived in South America, Indonesia and Africa.

The Huskies found him in the border town of Tsawwassen, British Columbia, on the same peninsula with Point Roberts, where he played just a season of high school football and a lot of rugby.

He was an extremely raw player who was new to the American game.

"I couldn't even name the positions on the field," said Hasselbach, who lives in the Denver suburbs, works in digital technologies and coaches and trains football players.

Once at the UW, he got buried on the Husky depth chart behind Dennis Brown, Travis Richardson and a young Steve Emtman.

Hasselbach finally began to make progress as a fifth-year senior, getting named as the most improved player coming out of spring practice, only to rupture a finger and delay his college debut.

"The timing for me was terrible," he said.

In his final college game, he tackled Florida's Emmitt Smith in the 1989 Freedom Bowl, a 34-7 UW victory.

That was his college football highlight in a nutshell.

The thing about Hasselbach, though, was he presented himself as an exceptional physical specimen.

Mental, too.

He didn't have any game film to speak of, but he possessed all of "the measurables."

For pro football scouts, he graded out well on the Wunderlich test, which sizes up cognitive abilities.

He bench-pressed 225 pounds some 47 times, one of the greatest weight-lifting performances the NFL guys would ever see.

Even wilder, this hulking Hasselbach ran the 40-yard dash in a stunning 4.59 seconds.

Still, someone had to give him a push.

"It wasn't my ambition to be a professional player," he said. "But I knew I might get some opportunities."

During the 1990 NFL draft, the Philadelphia Eagles called Hasselbach and told him they were going to pick him.

He discouraged them.

He was headed for the Canadian Football League and the Calgary Stampeders, who had already drafted him.

His pro football journey, which is described in added detail tomorrow in part two of this Super Bowl series, eventually brought him back to Seattle.

To Husky Stadium.

For a victory lap.

We explain that.

"I was just this giant character walking around who never played there," Hasselbach said. "I have nobody to blame but myself. It was a bit of redemption for me to come back and show I actually could play."

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