Ronde the Buccaneer

Still running.

Ronde Barber was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with the 66th overall pick in the 1997 NFL Draft. Since picking Barber, the Bucs have drafted 80 players who are no longer with the team.

Chris Simms has ruptured his spleen and gone. Dwight Smith has had sex in the stairwell of a two-story McDonald’s and was gone. Al Harris got waived, and he was gone.

Barber’s first season marked the beginning of the Bucs’ late 90s revolution. He started the same year that red and pewter started. He started the same year the Bucs earned their first winning season and playoff appearance since 1982. He wasn’t the star, he was far from it. In fact, he only saw action in one game all season before being named the nickel back for the postseason games against the Lions and the Packers.

Donnie Abraham was the man at corner. He mastered the Tampa 2 style, or so we thought.

In 1998, Barber started nine games. Then he took a prominent role as Abraham’s sidekick during the 1999 NFC Championship Game run, and he never receded. Ever since, he has been a star. He was the first man out of the tunnel every home game when the PA announcer would introduce the starting defensive lineup. He would sprint out as fast as he could before the deep voice even had a chance to overstretch his name and his Virginia origins.

This lasted until the originals began to dissipate, leaving Barber all alone. First it was Lynch, then Sapp and then Brooks. The three-pronged public relations disaster that will have Buc fans shaking their heads for as long as Bucs exist. Ronde had to start coming out last. It was the only thing that made sense.

Dexter Jackson won a Super Bowl MVP and came and went … twice. Kenyatta Walker had three false starts on one down, got booed a lot and was gone. Bruce Gradkowski talked too much and was gone.

Barber had really good years and a really bad year. There were people cursing his name and yelling for retirement in 2009, and people chanting his name and begging him to never leave in 2010.

It turns out the people screaming in 2010 may be the ones getting what they truly want. That’s because Barber signed a one-year contract to remain in the NFL and remain with the Bucs on Tuesday. The Bucs gave him a contract even though players and owners are currently politely rioting over issues that could keep there from even being football in 2011.

They gave him a contract even though, at 35, he is the oldest Buccaneer cornerback by nine years. Barber is coming back for a 15th season on what was the youngest team in the NFL in 2010.

And it’s about damn time.

Only two players have ever had happy endings to complete careers as a Buccaneer. Lee Roy Selmon is one, and some might still complain that Mike Alstott was given a slight push out the door by Jon Gruden and Bruce Allen. But now it seems all but certain that Barber will be No. 3.

The other Dexter Jackson lasted seven games in the NFL and couldn’t stay on the worst team in the NFL’s practice squad in 2010. All the fun “Mike Jones” Mark Jones comments in the world couldn’t keep the kick returner from Rocky Top around town. Raheem Morris publicly blasted Gaines Adams for being out of shape and lazy at training camp in 2009. Adams died five months later due to an enlarged heart.

I only know about the NFL labor disputes what I’ve learned in my sports reporting class. From what I know, the owners are completely in the wrong in a number of ways. They’re trying to handle players for the long term in a league where the average career lasts about three-and-a-half seasons.

Whenever owners are in the wrong, the Glazers are usually at the head of it all. I have wasted far too much time of my life writing negative things about the family in any place that my keyboard could reach.

But for all the negative, this Barber deal defines the word “positive.”

It’s about being a person instead of a businessman. It’s about learning from the backlashes of the Allen era and letting Mark Dominik do what is right. It’s about remembering that early evening when you could hear Barber’s feet clank across the turf at a silent and stunned Veteran’s Stadium as Tampa broke into tears of joy after 26 long years.

As sure as Barber’s name will one day grace the walls of Raymond James Stadium, he deserves to be a Buc for as long as he cares to be. They’ve messed up too many times to not make this one right.

-Bryan