Running to twilight

By Sam Farmer

Nov. 12, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. —

After nearly 10,000 yards rushing, more than 50 touchdowns and the undying respect of New York Giants fans, running back Tiki Barber intends to walk away from pro football at the end of this season.

Better to walk away than limp.

For a reminder of that, Barber needs only to look across town, where New York Jets counterpart Curtis Martin is reluctantly facing an abrupt end to his brilliant career because of his deteriorating right knee. Martin, 33, hasn’t announced his retirement, but his season is over and it would shock no one if he decides to call it a career.

Barber and Martin, more admiring acquaintances than close friends, share a Big Apple bond. Together, they represent close to 25,000 yards rushing -- Martin is fourth in NFL history with 14,101 -- and each is the emblematic face of his franchise. But with the curtains falling on their careers, the two are in very different situations.

“Being in the biggest media market, a place where football is passion and king, Curtis and I are going out on completely opposite terms,” Barber said this week in a phone interview. “He’s another example of guy who was the most consistent, reliable, one of the greatest running backs in the history of this game. And literally in a snap he gets an injury on one play of a game and his career ends.

“It’s almost not fair, because that’s what people will remember, how his career ended. In the long run, they’ll remember his greatness. But they’ll remember that he ended doing nothing. And I don’t want to do that.”

Barber’s retirement plans have been a hot and controversial topic over the last month. He’s the league’s leading rusher this season with 830 yards in 172 carries, and the Giants (6-2) have won five consecutive games. They play host to Chicago (7-1) tonight with NFC bragging rights at stake.

Although Barber is as dedicated as ever, the violence of the game is starting to take its toll. For the first four days after a Week 2 victory at Philadelphia, he could not lift his head off the pillow each morning. He had to roll onto his side, grab the side of his head and hoist himself out of bed.

He said it’s the worst he felt in his 10-year career, and that Eagles linebacker Jeremiah Trotter “guessed right probably on every running play that we had. He clobbered me.”

Barber, 31, said he knows he’s getting old as a player because, in the wake of that Eagles game, he saw a physical specialist Monday through Friday. He was treated by an acupuncturist Monday, a massage therapist Tuesday and a chiropractor Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

“On Sunday I look fine, and the next Sunday I look fine,” he said. “But it’s the week in between ... “

NFL players, Barber said, mortgage their futures and are facing a lifetime of aches and can’t-lift-your-head-off-the-pillow pains.

“The present-day benefits of being a professional athlete, whether it be the adulation, the money, the chase of a championship, the camaraderie, whatever, it’s definitely more important to you now,” he said. “But you don’t realize that 10 years from now, that’s when you’re going to pay for it. You’re taking a loan out now, and you’re going to pay for it later.”

When news broke of his retirement plans, Barber received an e-mail from Barry Word, a fellow University of Virginia alumnus who spent seven NFL seasons with the New Orleans Saints, Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings and Arizona Cardinals before retiring after the 1994 season.

Said Barber: “He said, ‘You’re making the right decision, because I can tell you from experience that it hurts much worse later than it does right now.’

“And it hurts a lot right now.”

The pain of the game is one reason Barber intends to retire in the prime of his career -- but certainly not the only reason. He has always considered himself much more than a football player, and much of his time away from the Giants is spent cultivating a broadcast career. He has several radio shows and frequently is a guest host on the “Fox & Friends” cable morning news show.

“I envision myself doing some type of morning show, whether that’s on cable or network television, I don’t know yet,” Barber said. “I’m excited about that kind of challenge. And I could fail, like I did early in my career as a football player, but I have these ideals and characteristics that have shaped me throughout my football-playing life, and other things, that I can rely on. I’m excited about that.”

Although he doesn’t want to travel the well-worn path of athlete turned sportscaster, Barber said that reports he wants to be the next Tom Brokaw are overblown. He doesn’t entirely rule that out, though.

“It gets misrepresented what I want to do with my life,” he said. “Fifteen or 20 years from now, maybe, if that’s where my maturity and growth as a broadcaster leads me.”

Even though Barber intends to become a member of the media, he has had issues this season with reporters who suggested his early retirement could be a distraction for the team. In an uncharacteristic moment of public anger, he lashed out at one New York columnist after a game, and later called ESPN analysts Michael Irvin and Tom Jackson “idiots” for criticizing his decision.

He said the notion he would risk creating a distraction is “a misunderstanding of how football players think, but it’s also a mischaracterization of who I am.”

Fellow Giants running back Brandon Jacobs agreed, asking, “Who did they talk to? I think it was a bunch of bull. People have their opinion, but no, it wasn’t a distraction. We’re 6-2.”

The fact remains that Barber will hang up his cleats after this season, following the lead of some of the great NFL backs who, for one reason or another, moved on when they still had untold carries left in their legs: Jim Brown, Barry Sanders and Robert Smith.

“After a while, when you get older, you realize that it’s a young man’s game, and you start to lose the passion for it,” Barber said. “Once that happens, it’s just hard to go to work. And no matter how fabulous people on the outside think it is, you just sit in meetings -- and I find myself doing this now -- I sit in meetings thinking of other things. I’m not focused on what’s going on. I finish a game, no matter whether I play well or poorly, and I’m thinking that really [stunk]. My body’s killing me right now. I’m just thinking about how much I hurt.

“So your focus shifts from this exultation of being a great football player to, ‘I wish I was doing something else.’ And that’s when you know.”

sam.farmer@latimes.com

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

NFL running backs who retired in their prime....

Too earlyToo late

...And some others who didn’t:

O.J. SIMPSON

* Finished career with 460 yards in 1979 as a 49er.

TONY DORSETT

* 11 years in Dallas and one in Denver.

EMMITT SMITH

* Gained 18,355 yards (1,193 coming in Arizona).