football player
Personal Information
Born Jamael Oronde Barber on April 7, 1975, in Montgomery, VA; son of James "J.B." and Geraldine (Brickhouse) Barber (a Girl Scouts executive); married Claudia; children: Yammile Rose
Education: University of Virginia, degree in commerce, 1997.
Memberships: Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
Career
Drafted by Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 1997; became starting right cornerback, 1998-.
Life's Work
Ronde Barber's defensive talents helped lead his football teammates, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to a 2003 Super Bowl victory in the National Football League (NFL). The Virginia native and twin of Tiki Barber, a running back for the New York Giants, wears the No. 20 red jersey for Tampa Bay and plays the right cornerback position. Barber was a third-round draft pick who endured a dismal rookie season on the sidelines, but within a few years his career statistics advanced rapidly in team, conference, and league standings.
The Barber twins were born a month prematurely in April of 1975. Their parents were living in Montgomery, Virginia, at the time, and an African friend suggested the names: Jamael Oronde means "first-born son," and Atiim Kiambu translates as "fiery-tempered king." The couple's marriage ended in divorce just a few years after the twins were born. Their father, James "J.B." Barber, had been a star running back at Virginia Tech and went on to play in the World Football League. He had little contact with his boys until much later in their lives, and did not provide financial support. Geraldine Barber was the tough-minded daughter of a U.S. Army major killed in Vietnam, and had helped raise her own siblings as a teenager.
Because they were premature, both children suffered occasional seizures until they were of kindergarten age, but they grew up to be strong and athletic despite their rough early start. Their mother made certain her sons were as focused on their schoolwork as they were on sports. She was known to bar them from team practice until their homework was completed. To make ends meet, Geraldine Barber had "homework" as well, taking in transcription work at home for extra money. "I had to pay bills," she told Roanoke Times journalist Doug Doughty. "I had to feed my kids. They ate a whole lot then." Much later, after the twins became NFL celebrities, the press seemed intrigued by the missing parent's story. Neither of the Barber twins was interested in rekindling ties. "I consider our family to be me, my mom and Tiki," Barber said in the Roanoke Times interview. "[My father] was never a fixture in our family. We saw him once in junior high, but it's been so long, I don't recall. He's called a couple of times after games. It's definitely an awkward situation."
At Cave Spring High School in Roanoke, Barber was a solid student, honor society member, and champion hurdler who won the 55-meter national title twice. Both he and Tiki were standout athletes on the Cave Spring football team, and once shared Male Athlete of the Year honors. While playing for the University of Virginia, they also shared living quarters all through school. Barber played his freshman season as a redshirt and emerged as the 1994 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Rookie of Year. Making an impressive cornerback, he ended his college career with 15 interceptions, just two short of a school record, and made the All-ACC roster three times. After earning a degree in commerce, Barber decided to give professional football a shot, although he could have played another year in college because of his 1993 redshirt status. His soon-to-be former coach also stated publicly that Barber could have used another year's worth of experience.
Barber was a third-round draft pick for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and his 1997-98 rookie season as a cornerback was less than thrilling. Pro ball had different styles and strategies than the college game, and it took Barber a while to master the Bucs' "bump-and-run" defense. He played in just a few games, but stunned a hostile Green Bay crowd during a January playoff game in freezing Wisconsin temperatures by making two tackles and averting a pass. The Bucs lost in the end, but Barber's confidence seemed to gain momentum, and he was tapped to replace an injured Anthony Parker as starting right cornerback for a few games in October of 1998. He soon emerged as one of the star players on the Bucs 1998 roster, ending the season with 68 tackles. Team stats were still dismal--the Bucs finished 8-8 in the League--but the following season the team advanced to the playoff, assisted by 77 tackles from Barber, who started in all but one of 16 games.
In 2000 Barber finished the season with a career-best 97 tackles. After his contract expired, he was a free agent for a time, but re-signed with the Bucs after they offered a six-season, $18.75 million contract. Meanwhile, brother Tiki was already a major celebrity in the New York area as a New York Giants running back, even hosting his own radio show, and both were named to People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" list in 2001. Barber played in his first Pro Bowl game that same year, and won the NFL Alumni Defensive Back of the Year honor, to cap a season record of ten interceptions--a rare occurrence in the league.
Barber was dismayed when the Bucs' front office released its coach of six years, Tony Dungy, from his contract at the end of the 2001 season. "He gave me my shot," Barber told Doughty in the Roanoke Times article. "He drafted me; he played me. I'm in the league because of him. He kind of went out on a bad note. They didn't treat him the way he deserved to be treated." Under new coach Jon Gruden, Barber's performance seemed to diminish--he made just two interceptions in the 2002 season--but Bucs defensive tackle Warren Sapp defended Barber. "The thing that gets overlooked is that nobody threw the ball at Ronde this year because they knew how effective he was," Sapp asserted in an interview with Washington Times reporter David Elfin. Barber played in all 16 games in 2002, but added just nine yards to a career 259 total. Yet his abilities were put to the test in the last quarter of a tight playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles, when Barber "picked off Donovan McNabb's pass and raced 92 yards to score," noted the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. According to their reporter Mike Bruton, the crowd, "which was said to be so excited that the stadium was shaking, [turned] into something resembling a still photograph." As Barber told Bruton, it was "my longest play ever. It was a great experience. I just remember trying to get to the end zone as fast as I could. It was a sweet silence."
Barber has said that, for him, one of the drawbacks to playing in the NFL is that it is sometimes hard to catch his brother's games. But Tiki was able to watch Ronde's first Super Bowl game the following week in San Diego, when the Bucs crushed the Oakland Raiders 48-21, and took their first-ever league championship. Despite a match-up that pitted him against two of the NFL's veteran receivers, Jerry Rice and Tim Brown, Barber explained in an interview with Elfin in the Washington Times that his own determination makes every game a Super Bowl-worthy match-up. "I take pride in being a physical guy even though I'm only 178 pounds," he told the paper. "If you play with a passion, you can do anything you want. I'm fearless. ... I treat every play like it's my last one, and I want to be perfect on that play." Barber is married and has a young daughter with his wife, Claudia. He and his brother have served as best man at one another's weddings, and even appeared together in a television commercial for Visa.
Awards
Earned Super Bowl XXXVII ring, 2003.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, November 15, 2001; January 22, 2003.
- New York Times, January 26, 2003.
- Roanoke Times, August 24, 1996, p. B1; January 15, 2000, p. C1; February 9, 2002, p. C1; January 26, 2003, p. A1.
- Virginian Pilot, January 4, 1998, p. C14.
- Washington Times, January 25, 2003.
- "Ronde Barber 20," Tampa Bay Buccaneers, http://www.buccaneers.com/bucsnet/team/playerdetail.aspx? player=Barber,Ronde,20&bioyear=2000 (August 22, 2003).
— Carol Brennan
