| |
THE MONDAY PROFILE
By Eric Gilmore
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Mon, Aug. 07, 2006
SAN PABLO - Richmond's Benny Barnes spotted the bus that summer day in 1972 after it arrived at California Lutheran College in Thousand Oaks.
Barnes was a rookie free agent cornerback out of Stanford, one of over 100 long shots who had reported earlier to the Dallas Cowboys' training camp.
Soon, veterans from the reigning Super Bowl champion Cowboys arrived.
Barnes watched as quarterback Roger Staubach walked off the bus. He saw defensive tackle Bob Lilly, wide receiver Bob Hayes and countless stars he had seen beat Miami in Super Bowl VI that January.
"I thought that was going to be my best summer job ever," Barnes said last week from his office at Contra Costa College, where he's a full-time athletic equipment manager and helps coach the Comets' football special teams.
"You walk into camp in awe. Here's the world champions. You know them all."
Barnes had been a starter at Stanford for two years and was part of the team that won back-to-back Rose Bowls, beating Ohio State and Michigan. But he wasn't chosen in the 1972 NFL draft, and he expected to get cut during camp.
Barnes assumed he would practice with NFL royalty for a few weeks, earn a few hundred dollars then return to the Bay Area and to a job he had lined up with PG&E.
So much for assumptions.
Barnes made the Cowboys as a rookie and played 11 seasons for Dallas under legendary coach Tom Landry. He played in three Super Bowls, winning one, and eight NFC championship games.
Now 55, Barnes spends his work days at a cramped office and equipment room adjacent to the men's locker room at CCC, where he went to school for two years after graduating from Kennedy High School.
You couldn't get much farther away from the bright lights of Texas Stadium and life in the NFL. But Barnes has found his bliss in the past 11 years, doing work most former NFL stars probably couldn't wrap their egos around.
"Benny is just a tremendous human being," said former CCC athletic director Tom Kinnard. "He's so humble, it embarrasses you.
"He loves this area. He's doing it because he's giving back. He's down there working as a coach and equipment manager. He's the real foundation holding that program together."
Kinnard coached Barnes at Kennedy and hired him as his college's equipment manager.
"I still feel a very big sense of pride in this job," Barnes said. "It's a lot more than buying equipment and fitting kids with equipment."
Barnes also organizes the athletic department's motor pool and travel plans. He sets up gyms and fields "to perfection" for home games.
Those are some of his official duties. Unofficially, he's a career counselor, confidant and mentor who just happens to own a Super Bowl ring.
Instead of a Cowboys playbook, Barnes totes "Profiles of American Colleges," a reference book he uses to encourage players to continue their education and athletic careers at four-year schools.
"That's what we're here for," Barnes said. "That's what everybody's trying to get out of here for, to get to that next level. So we try to help them as much as possible with that."
His job at CCC has been a labor of love, but it has also been a way for Barnes to make ends meet.
Barnes played in the NFL before the era of free agency and seven-figure contracts.
His first Cowboys contract was for $16,500 with a $500 signing bonus.
Barnes' final contract in 1982 was for $125,000 -- less than the minimum salary for NFL rookies today.
"I've been working ever since I quit," Barnes said.
After retiring from the NFL, Barnes went into business with Cowboys teammates Ed "Too Tall" Jones, Preston Pearson and Butch Johnson.
Their biggest venture was in fast food. They eventually owned 10 Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. Unfortunately for Barnes and his partners, all but two of those franchises were in West Texas oil towns such as Midland and Odessa. In the late '80s, the oil business "bottomed out" and the local economies went with it.
"If you've ever driven through West Texas, the only thing moving is tumbleweed and oil wells," Barnes said. "We just watched those places die."
Barnes and his ex-teammates sold their businesses in 1990. In 1991, Barnes and his family returned to Richmond. He accepted a job as "marketing director" for a janitorial company that had contracts with many of the local military bases.
"I don't want to say that every time I get with a company things start going wrong, but that's when the military bases started closing," Barnes said.
Barnes had been moonlighting as an assistant football coach at CCC since returning to the Bay Area. So when he began job hunting again in the mid-1990s, he decided it would be "great" to work full-time at the college.
"Being here part-time really kind of triggered something in me," Barnes said. "Being on campus was like being back home. I had one of the greatest experiences being here as far as being directed on the right path."
So when longtime equipment manager J.D. Banks retired, Barnes replaced him.
"Even though (Banks) was basically just an equipment guy, he probably counseled and talked to kids more than the teachers and the counselors," Barnes said.
"I looked at that and said, 'I'd like to do something like that, to be involved with the kids, not teaching but having access to them and trying to help them experience what I did, being able to get out of here and go to a place like Stanford.'"
After graduating from CCC, Barnes had his choice of numerous colleges that were recruiting him. He picked Stanford over UC Berkeley, Washington, Washington State and Colorado, among others.
"He was really a good, solid guy, the kind of guy you like to take home and call your own," said former Stanford coach John Ralston. "The all-time best."
"He was just an exceptional player, well-liked by everybody."
Barnes returned to Stanford after his rookie NFL season to pass the final five units he needed to graduate with a history degree.
"The two biggest surprises of my life were going to Stanford and making the Cowboys," Barnes said. "I was a student, but I didn't consider myself a Stanford student. To be tossed into that mix, I just had a lot to prove."
During his NFL career, Barnes was often overshadowed by more decorated teammates and coaches. Staubach, Lilly, Landry, Tony Dorsett, Randy White and Mel Renfro are all in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Barnes, though, intercepted a pass during Dallas' 27-10 victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XII. And he was at the center of one of the most controversial penalties in Super Bowl history.
Early in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XIII against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Barnes was flagged for pass interference at the Dallas 23-yard line. That call set up a key touchdown in the Steelers' 35-31 win.
Barnes and Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann got their feet tangled up on the play and landed on the ground. To many observers, a flag was unwarranted.
"When I see it on TV, I don't know if it's my claim to fame or claim to shame," Barnes said.
"After a while you just have to count your blessings and say, 'Hey, I've got a lot more to be thankful for than that play.'"
Reach Eric Gilmore at egilmorecctimes.
BIOGRAPHY
• WHO: Benny Barnes
• AGE: 55
• RESIDENCE: Richmond
• CLAIMS TO FAME: Played defensive back for the Dallas Cowboys from 1972-82. Appeared in three Super Bowls, winning one. Was a member of Stanford's victorious Rose Bowl teams after the 1970 and 1971 seasons. Member of Stanford Athletic Hall of Fame.
• OCCUPATION: Athletic equipment manager and assistant football coach at Contra Costa College.
• EDUCATION: Graduate of Richmond's Kennedy High School, Contra Costa College and Stanford.
• PERSONAL: Married with three sons and one daughter.
________________________________________
© 2006 ContraCostaTimes and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
contracostatimes
The "Terry Glenn: Badass" edition. Holy crap, did you see that catch he made in the endzone last night?
UPDATE: Huge news today. Arizona State QB Sam Keller has decided to leave the school. The story goes that he was given the starting job last Friday, but yesterday Dirk Koetter abruptly decided to go with Rudy Carpenter instead. Keller either didn't practice or was asked to leave practice on Sunday (the story doesn't make it clear). Rumors are flying that some of the players requested a meeting with Koetter in order to make it clear that they preferred Carpenter. ESPNNews is reporting that Keller has decided to transfer to Nebraska.
Previous installations: 40-49 | 50-59 | 60-69 | 70-79 | 80-89 | 90-99 | 100-109 | 110-119
Maryland Terrapins (Ralph Friedgen; 5-6, 3-5 ACC Atlantic)The Terps are another one of those teams like Washington State or NC State that had a bunch of great seasons in a row, then crashed pretty hard. They went 31-8 in the three years from 2001 to '03, but have been 5-6 in both of the seasons since then. They've been plagued by poor defense and middling offense, despite having TE Vernon Davis (#6 to the 49ers) and LB D'Qwell Jackson (#34 to the Browns) on the squad. Four starters are back on the offensive line as is the backfield, but the receiver corps has been gutted; Drew Weatherly leads returning wideouts with a measly 10 catches last season. The defense returns seven starters, but the top three tacklers from last year are all gone. The conference schedule isn't tough, but it isn't easy, either. Out of conference, the only loss should come in the game at West Virginia, but it's tough to imagine Maryland doing any better than 6-6 with this slate.Missouri Tigers (Gary Pinkel; 7-5, 4-4 Big 12 North)My general feeling regarding Mizzou is "no more Brad Smith, no more winning seasons." The guy was a great dual threat, and was the first player in Division I-A history to pass for 8,000 yards and rush for 4,000 in a career. But even with him, the Tiggers were just never that good. Personally, I never saw him justify his (relatively modest) hype, and I think the fact that he wasn't drafted until pick #103 (to the Jets), and then as a wide receiver, bears this out. His probable replacement, Chase Daniel, has shown himself to be pretty serviceable, and led a fourth-quarter comeback against Iowa State to attain bowl eligibility. Most of the rest of the offense returns, with the sole notable exception of receiver Sean Coffey, the team's best. The defense must improve, as that has been Missouri's glaring weakness ever since Gary Pinkel took the job. The front seven return almost intact, but the secondary is going to be a major rebuilding project.Arkansas Razorbacks (Houston Nutt; 4-7, 2-6 SEC West)In addition to being another one of those teams like Maryland and Washington State that had several good seasons followed by a serious crash, the 'Backs are also one of those teams that I just loathe with every fiber of my being, for reasons far too numerous to relate here. There are already bets being taken on how many games will go by before high-profile local recruit Mitch Mustain is the permanent starting QB. That might be the best thing to happen in Fayetteville in quite a while, because if there was one single game aspect that Arkansas simply couldn't master last year, it was the passing game. Not much was expected of a team that returned only six starters, but this year's squad returns 20, so if they don't perform up to par, it could cost Nutt his job.Texas A&M Aggies (Dennis Franchione; 5-6, 3-5 Big 12 South)Nobody in College Station can quite figure out what is going on, here. After his promising second season, the Aggie faithful (read: creepy cult) expected big things from the 2005 team. Some people even went so far as to claim that A&M could compete for the Big 12 title. And while the offense was decent, even if QB Reggie McNeal could completely flake out at times, the defense was absolutely miserable. Just atrociously bad. They ranked dead last in the nation in passing defense, allowing 304.64 yards per game through the air (which is almost exactly twice as many as the national leader, Miami, allowed), and were 107th in total defense. Mid-1990s Wrecking Crew stalwarts Dat Nguyen, Quentin Coryatt and Sam Adams were all crying themselves to sleep, watching this hapless, helpless team. In order to compensate, former Western Michigan head coach Gary Darnell is moving to a 4-2-5 defensive scheme, replacing one of the linebackers with a nickelback. To staff it, they're looking for the smaller, more agile kind of linebacker/strong safety hybrid, and they may have found it in juco transfer Mark Dodge. Most promising, however, are the performances of then-freshman Stephen McGee and bull-headed tailback Jovorskie Lane against Texas last year. The two of them racked up almost 300 yards of total offense against the conference's best defense (but were still beaten by the 'Horns for the sixth straight time, neener-neener). Also back are four offensive line starters and tight end Martellus Bennett (whose name, incidentally, means "hammer" in Italian). So the offense will be stacked, but everything, including Franchione's job, turns on defensive improvement.Iowa State Cyclones (Dan McCarney; 7-5, 4-4 Big 12 North)For two straight years, the Cyclones have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and back their way out of a Big 12 championship appearance on the last play of the last game of the regular season, both of them in overtime. In 2004, Missouri intercepted a touchdown pass in the endzone, and last year, ISU missed a long field goal at Kansas. The Jayhawks made theirs and won. They're taking the sting of those losses into this season with them, and they're expecting to have the best offense in the North division. QB Bret Meyer is only a junior, and this will be his third year as the starter. By the time he's done (assuming he sticks around for year four), he'll have demolished all of the school's quarterback records. Also featured are two of the conference's best receivers, Todd Blythe and Austin Flynn, who was the 'Clones starter during their disastrous 2-10 2003 season. He lost the QB battle to Meyer the next season and unselfishly decided to switch to receiver, a position he had never played. He was the team's leading pass-catcher that year. The defense was acceptable, if unimpressive, last year, but only two starters return. If ISU is going to win, they're going to have to outgun opponents, since they're going to have trouble stopping them.Purdue Boilermakers (Joe Tiller; 5-6, 3-5 Big 10)Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. That's the story of football in West Lafayette. The Boilermakers have been competitive under Tiller, but they've never quite managed to convert it into conference crowns, with the lone exception of a three-way co-title in 2000, which they shared with Michigan and Northwestern. Last year, Purdue was ranked #11 in the country after two lackluster wins, then dropped their next six games. It was Tiller's first losing season (and first bowl-less season) in nine years at the school. With a brutal schedule that includes a 13th regular season game at Hawaii, it's going to be tough to turn things around quickly. Four of five starters on the offensive line return, but only 11 starters return to the team overall. The defense must be entirely rebuilt, although that's not necessarily a bad thing, since it was one of the worst in the country last year. Tiller has built up enough coaching capital (a respectable 67-43 record during his Purdue tenure) that the school should give him some leeway this year and next, but they're not going to sit idly by if the losing continues for three or four more seasons.South Carolina Gamecocks (Steve Spurrier; 7-5, 5-3 SEC East)The Ol' Ball Coach didn't do too poorly in his first season back in the college ranks. 'Cock fans (nyuk, nyuk) were positively ecstatic about it, in fact. The team won its first ever game in Knoxville, beat Florida for the first time since 1939, and posted their best conference record (5-3) since joining the SEC in 1992. It should come as no surprise that Spurrier has completely rebuilt the offense and it's now running on all cylinders. He's going to have to take at least a passing interest in a defense that only returns four starters, and wasn't that good to begin with. The schedule is very favorable, if not downright weak, but it includes one of the most compelling games of the entire season: Spurrier's homecomeing trip to Gainesville on 11 November. He's still revered as a god there, and he should receive a warm welcome from Gators fans. Then they will enjoy beating him.California - Los Angeles Bruins (Karl Dorrell; 10-2, 6-2 Pac-10)UCLA's 2005 season was defined mostly by blind, dumb luck and the occasional spectacular collapse. True bright spots were few and far between: beating a shellshocked Oklahoma team early in the season later wound up looking more impressive than it actually was at the time, and the bowl win over Northwestern was statistically impressive, but it was still a bit like watching a teenager with tuberculosis beat up on a toddler with no legs. In between, the Bruins needed overtime to beat weak WSU and Stanford teams, and were absolutely obliterated by Arizona, one of the worst teams in the league, 52-14. So they weren't anywhere near as good as their record, and now they've lost the only two players who kept them from going 6-5 last year, RB Maurice Drew and QB Drew Olson. The front runner to lead the team is Ben Olson, who started at BYU in 2001, took a Mormon mission, transferred to UCLA, and has thrown exactly four live-action college passes in the last five years. The weak side of the line is young, so Olson is a bit lucky that four of the first five games are against bottom-drawer competition (the only exception: Utah). After that, things could slope away rather sharply.Boise State Broncos (Chris Petersen; 9-4, 7-1 WAC)Boise stayed in-house after Dan Hawkins left for Colorado, and appointed five-year veteran offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Chris Petersen. He was there for Hawkins's entire ride, during which the Bruins were the fourth-winningest team in the nation (53), behind only Texas (56), Oklahoma (55), and USC (54). So that's nice. It'll be a monumental shock if there's any significant drop-off this season, since 20 starters return, including QB Jared Zabransky and LB Korey Hall. The coaching staff is among the youngest in the country, but with all the experience among the players, all they really have to do is not screw up too much. Boise has won 31 consecutive games on that hideous blue AstroTurf (Smurf-Turf!!) at Bronco Stadium, and they have most of their tough games (Oregon State and Fresno State) in its comfortable confines. Some very realistic BCS hopes ride on a tough road game at Utah, and the biggest challenge to a fifth-straight conference crown is a season-closing visit to Nevada. Don't let the low preseason ranking fool you; this could be a top-10 team come December.Wisconsin Badgers (Bret Bielema; 10-3, 5-3 Big 10)First, the good news: Barry Alvarez no longer has to scramble around Madison as both the athletic director and head football coach. The bad news? He'd rather be AD. Here's an amazing stat: since 1906, Wisconsin has had just 12 seasons of eight or more wins. Ten of those came during Alvarez's 16 years as head man. Like Bill Snyder at Kansas State and Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech, Alvarez transformed a national joke of a program into a top-flight contender with an occasional legitimate shot at a national title. The new coach, Bret Bielema, spent two seasons working with Snyder and has been in Madison since 2004, so he knows what's what. The Badgers have been steadily improving after going 5-7 in 2001, but it's going to be tough to follow last season's mark with only 11 starters returning. All-league left tackle Joe Thomas returns, as does QB John Stocco, who is the fourth-winningest starting quarterback (19) over the past two seasons. Who's ahead of him? Matt Leinart (25), Vince Young (24), and Jared Zabransky (20). Pretty good company, that. But rusher Brian Calhoun and most of the receiving corps are gone. The defense could be the best in the Big 10, but if the offense can't hold up its end of the bargain, they're going to have to rely on the weak schedule to get them through.
Denver Broncos Schedule
Other Searched Terms: biography elway john
, elway john stanford
, chrysler elway jeep john
, elway john poster
, elway john motor
, car dealership elway john
, elway jeep john
, collection elway home john
, bon elway john jon jovi
, boulder elway ford john
, elway john south subaru
, elway jersey john
,
|
|
