As a high school football player in Southern California, Nesby Glasgow was underestimated by college recruiters.

With good reason: He was a 160-pound defensive back.

Only one team in the Pacific-8 Conference – as it was then known – offered him a scholarship: the University of Washington.

“USC and UCLA both recruited me, but wanted me to go to junior college,” he recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t think so.’

“They thought I was too small. You know what killed me? This is the honest to God truth. My senior year we were in the playoffs and I knocked out a fullback who weighed 225 pounds. They had to cart him off the field.

“I’m like, ‘I just knocked this guy out who’s going to a Division I college and you have questions about my size?’”

Glasgow went on to have an illustrious career with the Huskies, being named a cornerback on the UW All-Time Team in 1990, then played 14 years in the NFL, including five with the Seahawks, after again being underestimated as an eighth-round draft choice.

Now he’s faced with another challenge – convincing people in Snohomish County that they should support a National Indoor Football League (NIFL) team, of which he is president.

So is this the 160-pound cornerback taking on the 225-pound fullback again?

“Definitely,” Glasgow said at a press conference to introduce the coaching staff of the Everett Hawks Tuesday afternoon at the Everett Events Center. “I always like challenges.”

He’s got one here.

The NIFL is at the bottom of the pro football ladder, guys who essentially play for the love of the game -because they don’t make much money, though Glasgow wouldn’t say what they earn.

And it isn’t seen as a launching pad to the NFL. Indeed, Glasgow said any player thinking it is, is “more or less delusional.”

“If a guy’s goal is to get to the next level, maybe this is not the best avenue for him,” Glasgow said.

And if fans are looking for former All-American D-I players, they’re going to be sorely disappointed.

So what in the name of Sam Adams is the attraction to attend NIFL games?

“They’re fun and fast,” Glasgow said.

But so are the Seahawks. And their players are better. And they go with 11 guys on a side, rather than eight. And the field is 100 yards long, twice what NIFL gridirons are.

So give me something else. “Nobody plays great defense,” Glasgow, also the team’s defensive coordinator, said. “A score could be 70-50.”

Oh, like the Huskies. OK, that could be kind of fun.

The Hawks coach, Jay Atwood, compared it to the street ball he played as a kid, where you streak to the Cadillac and do a curl route.

“I did a lot of running to Cadillacs,” he quipped.

When I first heard that the Hawks were coming to Everett, my initial reaction was skepticism.

“Of course, you should be,” Glasgow said.

So if I come to a game, I’m going to like it? He guaranteed it.

More than whether I like it, I question whether there are enough entertainment dollars to spread around. After all, the Silvertips and the AquaSox gobble up a lot of them.

“In terms of entertainment dollars, I don’t worry about it too much,” said Fred Safstrom, executive director of the Public Facilities District. “We’re talking low-priced tickets and only seven (home) games.”

I’m the same guy who questioned whether ice hockey would sell here. The Silvertips answered with a resounding “yes.”

But then they had a nice formula for getting fans into the events center. “Nothing,” Safstrom said, “captures the imagination like winning.”

The Silvertips also offered body-banging, high-speed action, and Everett, being a blue-collar town, bought into it.

Glasgow is banking on that same kind of action to draw fans to indoor football next spring.

So is the owner of the Hawks, ex-Seahawk defensive lineman Sam Adams, who’ll be at Qwest Field next Sunday with the Buffalo Bills.

“I know that people in Everett take their football seriously,” Adams said by phone. “Everett and Snohomish County have great football tradition.”

Unlike when he was in high school, Glasgow doesn’t want to knock anybody out.

He wants to knock ‘em dead.