It’s safe to say that Tiki Barber is not the most popular figure amongst his former teammates or to New York Giants fans. Whether or not that’s entirely fair is neither here nor there. Barber, of course, will be inducted into the Giants’ Ring of Honor on Sunday night when New York hosts the only undefeated team in the NFC, the Chicago Bears. Barber’s former teammate Antonio Pierce felt the need to share a few choice words about his feelings towards Barber, and how he thinks fans at the Meadowlands will treat Barber when he’s being recognized for his undeniably impressive contributions to the Giants organization before calling it a career.
“Personally, I’m not a fan. No. I’m not a fan,” Pierce said of Barber, whom he played with in 2005 and 2006. “I respect the way he plays the game, I respect how he was as a football player. [But] I can’t tell you two things about TIki Barber. I don’t know him. [I] didn’t really get the chance to sit down and have talks with him. [I] wasn’t really interested in doing that.”
Not exactly the most impressive reasoning there Mr. Pierce. Let’s just move on to his bold prediction about Sunday night, and assume there’s something more substantive that he’s not comfortable sharing publicly.
“The way I think he’s going to be perceived in the new stadium is I think he’s going to be booed. He got booed for three years, the last three years I was in New York after he retired. Anytime they showed him on the JumboTron, they booed him,” Pierce said.