Hasselbeck Latest NFL Face of Sports Supplements

SEATTLE —  Matt Hasselbeck doesn’t mind being the latest face of the sometimes ugly nutritional supplement industry.

Supplements have given that face -- that of the Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl and Pro Bowl quarterback -- an accessory: a smoke-spewing cannon for a throwing arm.

Well, a new advertising campaign has, anyway.

“I was lobbying for Superman, so I could look through walls -- you know, the X-ray vision thing. I think that could serve me well against a pass rush this season,” a chuckling Hasselbeck said.

He was speaking recently by telephone from the Athletes’ Performance center within Arizona State’s athletic facilities. He was on a break from one of his final workouts before the defending NFC champions’ training camp opened this weekend in Cheney, Wash.

Swarms of elite athletes spend their offseasons training at the posh, Tempe, Ariz., retreat, founded in 1999 by workout guru Mark Verstegen. One of Verstegen’s corporate partners in Athletes’ Performance is Experimental and Applied Sciences, a Golden, Colo.-based supplement maker.

EAS, which Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories purchased for $320 million in 2004, has made Hasselbeck one of its latest NFL pitchmen. In print advertisements shot last month, it gave him the cartoon cannon arm. It also gives him enough protein powder mix and meal bars to feed the Seahawks’ offensive line.