Tiki Barber's post-NFL career in media has been a wild ride
Host Tiki Barber dresses in costume to celebrate the NBC "Today" Show Halloween Monster Bash in Rockefeller Center on October 31, 2007. Credit: Getty Images/Bryan Bedder
The guy was drafted by the Giants when Saquon Barkley was 2 months old, and a month before Daniel Jones was born.
He rewrote the Giants’ record book, likely saved Tom Coughlin’s job, got booed at his own Ring of Honor ceremony, authored children’s books, saw his marriage breakup turn into a tabloid firestorm, came and went quickly as the next big thing on morning TV, tried and failed to make an NFL comeback and, naturally, wore thigh-high red boots on a Broadway stage.
So yeah, Tiki Barber has been around.
Now this.
Effective July 24, Barber will move into what a previous occupant, Mike Francesa, once called “the best piece of real estate in this town” — afternoons on WFAN.
The station made it official on Tuesday, announcing that Barber will join Evan Roberts in drive time, succeeding Craig Carton, who is set to leave Friday.
Say what you will about Atiim Kiambu Barber — everyone else has for more than a quarter-century — but give him credit as a survivor.
“It’s been a long journey, man, for a lot of reasons,” he said on the air after the announcement.
This is not the time, place or space allotment to recount the entire story, but there have been few wilder Tilt-A-Whirl rides in recent New York sports history.
Barber, now 48, was different from the start, a guy from Roanoke, Virginia, who seemed born for Big Town.
He enjoyed talking to everyone from teammates to reporters about current events and often would sit by himself in the cafeteria at training camp long after the other players had left — working on The New York Times crossword puzzle.
It took coaches a few years to figure out how best to utilize him on the field, but eventually he became one of the NFL’s most versatile weapons. He ranks first in Giants history in rushing yards with 10,449 and second in receptions with 586.
That was not enough for a proud polymath like Barber, and he gave up playing for broadcasting after the 2006 season, aiming to be the next morning show star at NBC.
Long story short: He was not.
He criticized Eli Manning’s leadership shortly after retiring, only to see Manning lead the Giants to a championship later that season.
His marriage blew up publicly in 2010, further damaging his image.
Meanwhile, former teammate Michael Strahan — who had had a messy tabloid divorce of his own — essentially assumed Barber’s professional identity, becoming the multi-media superstar he is today. Some of us who were around the two in their playing days saw it coming, given Strahan’s preternatural charisma. But the starkness of their divergent paths was a shock.
With his career and marriage in tatters, Barber said on Tuesday, he “went through a depression” during which he spent his days watching reruns of “Cheers” and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”
“I’d wake up, have coffee, start watching TV, stay there all day and not leave,” he said.
Everything changed after his comeback failed — he in part blames the 2011 NFL lockout — and radio executives Mark Chernoff and Eric Spitz reached out to him. CBS Sports Radio was launching in January 2013, and they sought to pair him on a morning show with Brandon Tierney and Dana Jacobson.
“It was an easy yes, because I needed to find myself,” Barber said.
Tiki Barber with the Giants in 2006, NBC in 2007, and his wife, Traci Lynn Johnson in 2018.
Over the years, his personal life became more settled, and he continued to explore other worlds, including a role in “Kinky Boots” on Broadway in 2019. He also joined CBS as an NFL game analyst.
Nine years after they began, Barber and Tierney moved their program in 2022 to middays on WFAN, where Barber had dabbled in hosting early in his playing career.
Eighteen months after that, he got assigned to the big chair. Will it work? It will not be easy.
Carton is not for everyone, but he is a proven ratings-generator, and this change could revive the afternoon drive time race against ESPN New York — which lately has been a blowout for WFAN.
Barber brings added value to the station because, like morning co-host and fellow former jock Boomer Esiason, he has appeal to sponsors and advertisers beyond WFAN’s radio lifers.
Does he have the chops to make a mark in drive time?
We shall see.
But his circuitous media path has reached a new milestone, and for now, that is a victory itself.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
