Thread: Tiki Barber to join NBC in dual role

[size=13pt]Tiki Barber to join NBC in dual role[/size]

NEW YORK (AP) Tiki Barber will work for NBC next year after spending most of the 2006 NFL season entertaining bids from various networks for jobs in both news and sports.

The New York Giants' Pro Bowl running back will be introduced Tuesday at a network news conference, according to a person familiar with the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not directly involved in the contract.

Barber will work both on the ``Today' show and on the network's Sunday night football show. It is unlikely he would be in the broadcast booth with the longtime team of Al Michaels and John Madden.

Barber, who had worked in the offseason at Fox, had considered offers from that network and ESPN/ABC for news-sports roles.

The 31-year-old Barber announced in October that 2006 would be his final season after 10 years with the Giants.

He finished fourth in the NFL with 1,662 yards rushing, including a career-high 234 in the season finale, a 34-28 win in Washington that got the Giants to the playoffs. For his career, he had 10,449 yards rushing and 5,182 yards receiving, joining Marcus Allen and Marshall Faulk as only the third player in NFL history with 10,000 yards rushing and 5,000 receiving for their careers.

$3 Million for Tiki Barber Means Sterling Sharpe Is Out at NBC
Posted Feb 14th 2007 7:51AM
by Michael David Smith

POSTED 10:13 a.m. EST, February 14, 2007

TIKI TEES OFF ON TOM
pft.com

If you're sick and tired of Tiki Barber, raise your hand.

We'll now try to type the remainder of this item with only five fingers.

On Tuesday, Tiki Barber used the press conference introducing his arrival at NBC to blame his former boss for his premature retirement from the NFL.

"Coach Coughlin is very hard-nosed, and I didn't get a lot of time off, couldn't sit down and rest myself, and so it was a constant grind -- a physical grind on me that started to take its toll," Barber said.
"The grind took its toll on me and really forced me to start thinking about what I wanted to do next.
And that's not a bad thing.
That's a good thing, for me at least.
Maybe not for the Giants, because they lose one of their great players, but for me, it is."

What an ass.

Look, Tiki.
You played football.
Football is a physical sport.
Plenty of guys see their bodies get battered.
Just ask Jerome Bettis next fall, when you're watching games with him at 30 Rock and you're using words like "bloviate" and he's thinking to himself, "Does that mean 'fart'?"


We do not feel sorry for you at all, Tiki.
You chose to sign a contract extension when Coughlin was the coach.
So you chose to stay in New York (and to continue to lay the foundation for your new career) instead of landing with a team that wasn't coached by Coughlin.

Here are more of Tiki's quotes from Tuesday:


"There'd be days where I couldn't move on Tuesday or Wednesday at practice, and he'd get mad at me for going half-speed.
And I told him, 'Coach, I can't do it.
I'm gonna be out here, I'm never gonna miss a practice, but I can't give you what you want all the time.'
And he understood.

"We were in full pads for 17 weeks, and with the amount of injuries that we had, it just takes a toll on you.
You just physically don't want to be out there when your body feels the way you do in full pads.
And while it probably doesn't have a really detrimental effect on how you practice or how you play, it does on your mind.
And if you lose your mind in this game, you lose a lot.
And that's something that he has to realize.
And I think he does [now]."

Just the other day (scroll down), we posted a blurb reporting that, throughout the 2006 season, Barber was pissing and moaning about Coughlin to the players in the locker room and to management.


And it's possible that Barber even tried to suggest to ownership that, if Coughlin were to get fired, Tiki might stick around.

Or maybe he didn't -- and maybe this is all just a way for Tiki to make himself seem even more sympathetic (instead of just pathetic), so that the New York fans won't blame him for leaving early . . . and so that he might be able to politick his way into the Hall of Fame with less than Cantonesque credentials.