Tiki Gone?
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- October
- 18
If you woke up to the New York Times today, you saw a story bannered across the top of the sports page that says basically that Tiki Barber plans to retire at the end of the season.
The story itself has him saying he’s leaning toward retirement, which is only a slightly stronger way of saying the same thing he told me, and which I wrote, twice since the offseason. Tiki, you see, is one of those NFL-type Renaissance men, a multi-talented fellow that football needs a lot more than he needs football. He’s already got a talk show on Sirius Radio. He does Fox News. He acts. And, oh, yeah, he generally takes his football in 100-yard rushing chunks.
He has said in the past that if the Giants were to win the Super Bowl this year, he would retire on the spot. He also said if the Giants were to have a horrible year, he’d also retire because he didn’t think he could bring himself to do another offseason of physical conditioning after a losing season. And if the Giants got close—say, went to the NFC Championship game and lost—he might consider coming back.
So what appeared this morning is really nothing new. But with the Giants at 3-2 and on a mini-roll, it certainly appears Barber thinks this team could have Super Bowl potential. It’s no surprise, then, that he’d be leaning toward retirement at this point.
The only thing you need to keep in mind is this: It’s not going to happen yet. He has no plans to walk away in the middle of the season. And no matter what happens record-wise, he reserves the right to change his mind. So nothing is definite yet.
Just for the sake of putting my two cents in, I do believe he will retire at season’s end. Just remember, there’s a long way to go between now and then.
Ciao for now.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 10:38 am by Ernie Palladino. 
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Ernie Palladino
