Hasselbecks adjust to newfound fame

The bottles sit unopened, enough champagne to fuel a half-dozen New Year’s Eve toasts. Don’t get Tim and Elisabeth Hasselbeck wrong: They appreciate the gesture. It’s just that they barely have time to read the labels, let alone sample the contents.

When you’ve gone from unemployed to holding down the second-most important job in Washington — or you’re the unexpected new co-host of a national talk show — well, cork-popping tends to get lost in the shuffle.

“It’s funny,” said Tim, the Washington Redskins’ starting quarterback of the moment. “We have people sending us — really, sending Elisabeth — bottles of Cristal, saying, ‘Hey, congratulations.’ And it’s like, we haven’t celebrated. We don’t want this stuff.”

Hasselbeck laughed.

“I say that now, and I’ll have a locker room full of guys asking for it.”

Such is life for the Hasselbecks, the best-known couple with local sports ties since Mia Hamm and Nomar Garciaparra. Over the last two months, they’ve gone from minor to major fame, from killing time to collecting bubbly.

Tim, an undrafted NFL journeyman, is filling in for the injured Patrick Ramsey as the Redskins’ quarterback. Elisabeth, a former “Survivor” contestant, recently beat out 20 other candidates to land a spot on ABC’s estrogen-sodden daytime gabfest “The View.”

Needless to say, the holidays have been a little hectic for the couple that began dating when they were students at Boston College.

“What’s happening in our daily lives is almost a blur,” said Elisabeth. “Even good things can be hard to handle sometimes. We’ve both kind of stepped into roles that in some ways we were ready for, but in a lot of ways we’re still adjusting.”

The biggest adjustment? Forget the pressure of live television or hot-routing in the face of a Dallas blitz; try residing in separate cities, New York (where “The View” is taped) and Ashburn (where the Redskins practice).

Married in July of last year, the couple previously lived in Manhattan Beach, Calif., where Elisabeth worked as the host of the Style Network’s “The Look for Less.” Life, the Hasselbecks recall, was simple. Almost quiet.

Work out in the morning. Ride bicycles on the beach. Play basketball. Go to the grocery store.

So long as Elisabeth wasn’t traveling for location shoots — or Tim wasn’t tossing passes with friends to keep his arm sharp — the newlyweds had plenty of time to spend together. That wasn’t always the case: Elisabeth spent nearly two months in Australia for “Survivor,” while Tim played for the Berlin Thunder of NFL Europe for a few months of the couple’s engagement.

“Being in Manhattan Beach, we could not have picked a better place to spend our first year of marriage,” Elisabeth said. “When I was in Australia, we didn’t even speak for six weeks. That’s heavy on your heart.”

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