NEWS

Local angles: Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Va.

Photo: For a photo of Barden hoisting the
1979 Gator Bowl trophy, see instructions below.

By L.J. TOLER
UNC-CH News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- In the last 22 years, while Ricky Barden excelled in college and pro football and a sales career, one goal still escaped him in a way that the great wide receivers of the ACC seldom had.

But in all those years, the former star cornerback never, ever gave up on realizing that treasured dream: completing the college education he had started in 1976 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"I didn’t care how long it took," he says now. "I was going to do it. Sometimes people will fold under a challenge. And sometimes, the best of you will come out and meet it."

When Barden learned this fall that he had succeeded in the last of five independent study courses he took by mail to finish his degree, "it was one of the best feelings I had had in a long, long time."

This, from a man who was one of the Tar Heels’ all-time top defensive backs, a Ray Scott first-team All-American in 1979 and first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference player in 1978 and 1979. In 1979, he helped bring a Gator Bowl trophy back to Kenan field house.

Not even all those high-profile thrills -- not even eight years of attention from adoring pro football fans -- eclipse, in Barden’s mind, what he has accomplished now. With Sunday’s (Dec. 20) mid-winter commencement ceremony in UNC-CH’s Dean E. Smith Center, Barden, now a cable television sales representative in Virginia Beach, Va., will earn a bachelor’s degree in leisure studies and recreation administration.

Without it, he says, "I would always have felt like something was incomplete in my life. I didn’t want to feel like somebody who’s constantly on their kids about school when I didn’t bear down and do it myself."

Work, kids and the holidays are among reasons Barden won’t make it to Sunday’s ceremony. But despite the inconvenience of taking correspondence courses from Chapel Hill while he lived and worked in Virginia, Barden was not about to have any other university’s name on his diploma.

"My heart has always been where I started," he says. "Carolina football is like a family, and you can feel proud to have that on your wall."

The team engendered the unflagging determination that has led to his latest achievement. "Carolina football is well respected anywhere you can think of, and with that respect comes the pressure of feeling like society expects good things out of you," says Barden. "Playing ball at Carolina makes you feel like somebody special, and you gain that strength of being part of something special. You always want to compete and do well -- be a great employee, a great husband, a great father."

Raised in Norfolk, Va., Barden entered UNC-CH as a freshman in 1976 on a full athletic scholarship.

"He is tied at 11th all-time at UNC-CH with nine interceptions," says Steve Kirschner, media relations director for football and men’s basketball. "He held the UNC-CH record for interception return yards with 156 until Brian Simmons and Dre Bly broke the record in 1996-97. He led the Tar Heels in interceptions in 1978 with four."

His senior season, Barden made 103 tackles including 12 for losses, four of them quarterback sacks. He broke up nine passes and intercepted two. The next spring, before he had finished his course work, the Atlanta Falcons came calling.

"That’s when you decide to go ahead and try for the professional career," he says. But looking back, "I was angry with myself. When my education was free, I didn’t do what I should have done to get the most out of it."

The pro game’s mental intensity surprised him, but the physical demands remained as well. He recalls having once tackled Walter Payton, the former Chicago Bear running back now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "My head was hurting for a while," Barden says.

In 1981, the Canadian Football League’s Ottawa Roughriders offered him a guaranteed contract. "I was thinking security at that time," Barden says. "I was thinking I’d stay up there a couple of years and come back to the NFL."

For three years, he was a CFL All-Pro. But then, speeding downfield on a kickoff return, Barden felt pain sear through his left knee when a tackler flattened him from the side, shredding ligaments. He had to be carried off the field. Surgery got him back into the game three more years, but at a disadvantage for lobbying the NFL. He remained a Roughrider until football did the very same number on the very same knee.

"My foot got caught in the artificial turf," he says. "That stuff’s awful. It’s what ended my career."

He flew home to Virginia and a supportive family that saw him through recuperation and into his second life. But what would that be? "Here I was 30 years old and had never been on a job interview."

Working to rehabilitate the knee at a health club while he pondered his next step led Barden to a job there, where he discovered a knack for sales. In two years, he rose to general manager. The money was great, but the hours ran to 50 or 60 a week. By this time, he had a family to think about. And his lack of a degree still troubled him. "I was putting my schooling on the side."

Looking for a job that would leave him more time to himself, he landed at Cox Communications, where he has worked in sales the past three years.

"That gave me time to complete my education. I knew once I had the time I would do it. But you have to make the time."

He had tried to make the time all the way back to his days with the Falcons, undertaking the first of the correspondence courses he needed to augment course work he’d already completed as a traditional college student. He took some courses during off-seasons in Canada. Burgess McSwain would not let him forget.

"I kept pushing him to come back and finish," says McSwain, Carolina’s associate director of academic support for athletics. She called, she wrote and she prodded. "I wasn’t going to let him slip through the drain."

In her view, when the university recruits a student athlete, it is obligated to help him or her graduate. "You want them to know that at Carolina, we as a university care about them," she says.

But so many years into adulthood, a person can forget the discipline required for studying and completing assignments, says Bobbi Owen, associate dean of UNC-CH’s College of Arts & Sciences. When Barden called her a little over a year ago, he was discouraged about his uphill struggle.

"I think we were successful in convincing him that he could do it," she says now. "It wouldn’t be easy, but it was possible."

Barden realized, he says, that he’d have to give up lots of backgammon and cards with his friends. That sometimes, he would just have to go on studying when Quentin, now 13, or Ricky Jr., 5, tugged at his trousers and begged, "Daddy, let’s go do so-and-so."

"You just have to focus and try to get it done," Barden says. "It wasn’t easy." Thank goodness for his greatest academic cheerleader, his wife, Regina, who helped him study and typed his papers on her computer.

And for his ultimate inspiration. "I owe so much to God," Barden says. "He’s blessed me in so many ways,"

Through five independent studies, Barden paid his own way. Each required him to complete reading assignments -- four books for one course -- and 15 to 17 written assignments, some with short questions and some with essay questions. He mailed each completed assignment to his professor and awaited return of the graded paper. He arranged to take final exams under the supervision of professors at colleges in his area. He made all A’s and B’s, Owen says.

The degree equips him to design recreation and leisure activities for all types of people, including the elderly and handicapped. He is well versed in a variety of recreational programming and well schooled in human nature.

"I had to take quite a few psychology courses," he says. "I like working with people."

For now, Barden is content to remain at Cox and hold onto his degree, awaiting what the future holds. But immediately, it will be an asset as he continues to volunteer as a motivational speaker for high school athletes.

"If I talk to a kid about how important education is and he comes up to me and says, ‘Mr. Barden, what did you get your degree in?’ " he can answer with pride.

"Most guys are thinking about professional contracts," he says. "All you have to do is have an injury and those things are gone. I tell them there are good athletes all over the country, and you have to be good enough to make it, but you also have to be lucky. I tell them you can be the fastest guy around, but if you hurt your knee, you’re going to slow down. Your speed can be taken away from you, but if you get your education, that’s something you can have for a lifetime."

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Note: Barden can be reached weekdays at 757-222-8400 ext. 7392

Photo: For a photo of Barden hoisting the 1979 Gator Bowl trophy, contact University Photographer Dan Sears at 919-962-8592 or dan_sears@unc.edu.

News Services contact: L.J. Toler, 919-962-8589, work; 919-967-7970, home