Beyond The Game: Tiki Preparing For Life After Football

Barber In Talks With Nets About Post-Football Career

Just days after it was reported that Giants RB Tiki Barber would retire after this season, four networks — ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox — “began discussions with Barber about his potential in multiplatform roles across their news and sports divisions,” according to Karl Taro Greenfeld of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. Barber’s business manager Mark Lepselter has met with ABC/ESPN execs about Barber “possibly joining ‘Good Morning America’ and ‘20/20.’” Lepselter: “No disrespect to any of his predecessors, but nobody has done what Tiki is going to do. Nobody has left the league and gone straight to network news.” Greenfeld notes Barber has deals with Cadillac, Johnston & Murphy, PowerBar, Reebok, Dish Network, Foot Locker, Steiner Sports, McDonald’s and watchmaker Audemars Piguet. Lepselter said that Barber’s endorsement income is “roughly equivalent to his $4.5[M] annual football salary.” Barber said as a journalist, “I’ll have to be impartial. For instance, I have a deal with Cadillac that says I can’t say negative things about Cadillac. So if I were doing the news and a thousand Cadillacs started rolling over, then I would have to be critical of them. So it would breach my contract. That all has to go away” (SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, 12/18 issue).

COMING SOON: In N.Y., Bob Raissman writes, “Look for major pieces on Barber in upcoming issues of The New Yorker, ESPN The Magazine and Gotham magazine (cover story). New York magazine is also interested in profiling Barber, but he has yet to commit to an interview” (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 12/15).