As Ryan Clark-Tiki Barber Situation Enters Second Week, Possible Path to Détente

Saquon Barkley trading in his New York Giants blue for Philadelphia Eagles kelly green was the butterfly flapping its wings that set into a motion an awkward-to-watch-yet-entirely-compelling media beef between ESPN’s Ryan Clark and WFAN’s Tiki Barber. On his radio show last week reacting to the news, Barber perhaps somewhat seriously said that Barkley was dead to him. Clark responded by flying into the ring and defending the heavily quaded running back, basically saying that Barber was everything a veteran player should aspire not to be. Things escalated from there and at one point Barber’s WFAN teammate Gregg Gianotti called Clark a D-Bag.

That’s basically the situation and if you thought that these men in their 40s could resolve it in quick order then you were sorely mistaken because the cold war has raged on. But there is some good news. In a late-night missive Monday, Clark extended a bit of an olive branch that could expediate the peace process.

All it’s going to take is getting three men in a room with no cameras or microphones and no public talking afterward.

We sure hope this happens. Though the only way we’ll know it does is if the war of words stops. And even then people might conclude that everyone involved just found something more important to do than turn a rather routine offseason transaction into a public pissing contest.