Tiki Barber makes 'giant' debut on TODAY

The man under the helmet
Friends and family have always understood that Barber had greater ambitions than being known as a guy who could run really fast while holding a ball, but his decision to abandon his position as a sports hero has been harder to explain to fans.

“There’s a weird player-fan relationship that exists,” Barber said. “While they admire you and they appreciate what you do on the football field, there’s this reserved right to be able to determine when we go. In a lot of ways I robbed people of that because I went out on top.”

Barber continued: “It’s an American dream to be a professional athlete. [Fans wonder] how can I throw away making a ton of money, being a popular sports figure, to do something else?  It’s confusing because they don’t have the answer.”

He tried to answer those lingering questions again last week, as reporters lined up to meet the newest star at American’s No. 1 morning show just days before his debut. 

Barber has been used to answering tough questions for years — he’s famous for his openness with the media — but these queries had a different tone. Yes, the reporters wanted to know why he left the NFL, but they seemed more interested in Barber’s childhood, his opinion on the Don Imus controversy, and how he has come to own more than 50 suits.

So Barber leaned back in his chair on the TODAY set, and with an ease that suggested he had been there for years rather than days, shared stories of taking his two sons, A.J., 4, and Chason, 3, to the Museum of Modern Art and classes at the 92^nd street YMCA.

He talked about meeting his wife Ginny at the University of Virginia and how, ever since, he hasn’t had to worry about picking out a suit or cooking a meal. (Ginny, who was a fashion publicist until deciding to stay home full time to raise the kids recently, will be in charge of Barber’s NBC clothing allowance. She is also a great cook, and when she isn’t preparing a meal her parents, who live with the Barbers, are whipping up something tasty.)

Slide show   From the field to the studio Watch Tiki Barber’s evolution from a scrawny kid in Virginia to a professional football star to a TODAY correspondent.

In almost every interview, Barber talked about his mother, Geraldine, the emotion quietly rising in his eyes as he described the way she worked two jobs to raise Barber and his identical twin brother, Ronde —a cornerback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — on her own and how she never missed a game while they were growing up.

Even when Geraldine was fighting breast cancer during Tiki and Ronde’s final season at UVA, she had surgery on a Monday and was in the stands for their game on Saturday.

“My mother nurtured us to be the kind of people and players that we became,” Barber said.  “We persevered through a lot, we were always achievers and we would never want to let her down.”

Geraldine, 53, has never had any doubts that her son would be a success.

“In all of his life, whatever he set out to do, he will do whatever it takes to be successful and to get the job done and to get it done in a more than acceptable way,” she told TODAY.

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