If only Tiki would drop the microphone
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by LASportsblog
by MATT BERSON
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a die hard Cowboys fan. But all the trash Tiki Barber has talked about his former team has left them in a heaping publicity mess that has undoubtedly spilled out onto the playfield. Now retired, Tiki at age 30 continually rips his former teammates on the air during televised games, giving the already defunct New York Giants the stench of a team struck with the plague.
We’ve all heard the reasons why Tiki quit the league. 1a. Tom Coughlin is an ass hole that (b) made Tiki lose his love for the game. 2. Eli Manning is a pansy of a quarterback who couldn’t lead lemmings off a cliff, much less manage a football game, although he didn’t look to shabby against my Cowboys. 3. The wear and tear of the season and the toll it takes on the body isn’t worth it in the long run, i.e. Earl Campbell. 4. The Giants aren’t going to win the big one anytime soon and no professional team in their right mind would want to cough up the price tag of Tiki’s contract once he got fed up with New York and demanded to be released. 5. See 1a.
So now NBC has hired the well-spoken well-mannered, but fiercely treasonable Tiki to give his color commentary on Football Night in America, the “Local News at 6 o’clock with Christy Yamamoto and Dallas Rains” telecast in the ranks of NFL pre-game shows, the sole reason being that Tiki is one of the few successful African American superstars that white America doesn’t fear. Watching Bob Costas trying to crack a couple jokes with Tiki and Chris Collinsworth was like watching talking dogs play poker in expensive sport jackets. Not only was I not understanding what the hell they were trying to say, it was awkward to watch Bob Costas win pity chuckles out of the two players turned football experts. I was convinced they were just giggling because none of them were wearing pants behind the desk. When Costas suggested that Tom Coughlin was in Tiki’s ‘Top Five’ I nearly threw the remote at the TV.
Now that Tiki has crossed over to the side of making the story than actually being the story, his newfound power through the media is bad news for his teammates. Everyone knows Tiki should be still playing. Tiki knows Tiki should be playing. He’s like Barry Sanders, but with more fumbles and less respect because people in New York hate those who don’t win, or haven’t won yet for that matter. See Alex Rodriguez. And because Tiki’s not playing, he’s talking. Talking about why he’s not playing and who he’s blaming for it: The Giants.
By bashing the players, the organization, the coaches Tiki has given the general public insight of what it is to be a New York Giant- players are stuck in a club house run by a Hitler-mouse who hasn’t led them anywhere, a future Hall of Famer’s tag-along little brother has continually failed at coming up big when it matters (The best thing San Diego could have done back in 2003 was have Eli and his family hate the Chargers enough to not want to be given millions of dollars to live in San Diego and play football), their perennial pro-bowl defensive end has held out the entire training camp for more money because his ex-wife took him for all he was worth through divorce, and their best player since the Kerry Collins era makes the locker room seem like a scene from Lord of the Flies.
The telecast on Sunday was saturated with attempts to get Tiki to say he wanted to come back and help the Giants, suggestions that Tiki undoubtedly took as compliments to boost his already skyrocketing ego. As Costas, Collinsworth, Keith Olberman (who ironically hosted a segment called the “Worst Person in the NFL” when he clearly is the worst personality on sports television, besides Skip Bayless), and Jerome Bettis each took their jabs at the Giants, Tiki joked smugly in his “I told you this is why the Giants suck and I’m the greatest person ever” sort of way. The fact that NBC actually played on Tiki’s new book, the one which he calls out Eli Manning and bashes Coughlin, is remarkable; I can’t believe NBC’s commentaries and highlights were so bad on week one that they were forced to focus on trash talk between a commentator and his former team just so viewers wouldn’t be searching for a better commercial to watch rather than the show between the pauses in the game.
Tiki used to face criticism for his continual failure to hold onto the ball, but Coughlin fixed the problem. Now no one can force Tiki’s grip off the microphone because he’s actually got something to talk about. Thank Tom Coughlin.
