Tiki Barber leaves wife Ginny Barber for Traci Lynn Johnson

Tiki Barber and Traci Lynn Johnson want to build a love nest, but Tiki's wife Ginny Barber is pregnant with Tiki twins! (Photo: Wikipedia)

As the recent shenanigans of Tiki Barber and Traci Lynn Johnson remind us, celebrity infidelity and breakups sell magazines and drive gossip on the Web. Tiger Woods and Jesse James may never see the end of their sex-news cycles, and the Jim Carrey/Jenny McCarthy breakup has recently been announced on Twitter. The Peeping Toms of the world can’t get enough. In the case of Traci Lynn Johnson – the Tiki Barber girlfriend from NBC – Mr. Barber is leaving wife of 11 years Ginny Barber so he can be with Ms. Johnson.  What makes this situation even more disturbing is that Ginny Barber is eight months pregnant with twins, according to the New York Post. Those will be children three and four from their marriage. Sons A.J. and Chason are 7 and 6 years old, respectively, too young for the world of payday loans and auto loans, let alone cheating fathers.

Traci Lynn Johnson is an NBC intern at NBC, where Tiki’s a sports commentator

Tiki Barber, 35, apparently likes them young. Traci Lynn Johnson is 23, which isn’t a disgusting age difference, but it is significant. According to Huliq, Tiki Barber girlfriend Traci Lynn Johnson has accompanied the former NFL running back in recent months to Senegal for a Travel Channel documentary and was with him in Vancouver as he blogged the Vancouver Winter Olympics for Yahoo.com. An unnamed family friend told the Post he was “shocked to find out that (Tiki Barber) could walk out on his wife of 11 years while she’s pregnant with twins.”

Tiki Barber’s statement

In a press conference, Tiki Barber kept it simple, perhaps so as not to jam his foot into his mouth:

“After 11 years of marriage, Ginny Barber and I have decided to separate. This decision was a painful one, but we are moving forward amicably and will continue to work together to raise our children with the love and dedication they have always known.”

Traci Lynn Johnson has not commented publicly on Tiki Barber’s intense pain.

‘I want to be an honorable man’

That’s what Tiki Barber had to say in his 2007 memoir “Tiki: My Life in the Game and Beyond,” but it appears the “beyond” part has been trickier than he’d anticipated. He revealed his distaste for his own father’s desertion to the New York Post in 2004, and yet he’s doing the same thing to his own children. Here’s hoping he will support his soon-to-be former wife Ginny Barber well and that amicable visitation can be arranged. Children deserve both parents in their lives, and parents owe it to their children to be present in their lives. What Tiki Barber does with girlfriend Traci Lynn Johnson on their own time is up to them. Yet those things should not interfere with him being a father, provided that father is an honorable man.