SEATTLE – His mind was venturing now, to things not football related.
To life and death, to present and future.
“We are very blessed athletes to be out here practicing the game we love every day,” he said. “There’s nothing we should complain about.
“Coaches yelling at you – so what? ‘Cause every time I think about that, I think about the guys who are giving up their lives fighting over in Iraq.
“I’m waking up every day, I’m going home every night, I’m sleeping in my own bed. All I’ve got to worry about is what time I’ve got to be at practice. Those guys are worrying about their lives 24/7.
“There are so many things bigger than football in life.”
Washington tackle Khalif Barnes learned that at a young age.
The lessons started to sink in with the foster children his parents took into their home while he was growing up in Spring Valley, Calif.
“They’ve taken care of kids who have problems of sexual abuse, physical abuse, no parents at all,” he said. “You name it, I’ve seen it.”
The conversation had swung in this direction after he was asked if he had seen the newspaper photo of the lifeless little girl hanging out the window of a bus that had been bombed by a terrorist in Israel.
He had not seen it, but it got him to thinking. And when a big, old offensive lineman lets his mind wander, you never know where it might lead you.
Linemen go places where others fear to tread. They’re the smartest players on a football team – the funniest, the wittiest, the deepest thinkers.
Nobody knows this because of the big, dumb lineman stereotype that was probably started by some quarterback.
But there is depth in those big, wide bodies. All you have to do is plumb it. What you get might surprise you.
It might awaken you to the fact that these big guys have been struck by tragedy, just like you and I. That they grieve, just like you and I.
“I’ve seen a lot of things in my college experience,” Barnes said, sitting in the quiet of Hec Edmundson Pavilion the other day. “I lost teammates. I lost Curtis Williams. I lost Anthony Vontoure. Some great guys I knew personally.”
Barnes has seen how quickly the dreams of a dynamic young player can be wiped out. He saw it when Williams was severely injured in a game against Stanford in 2000 and died two years later.
“Here’s a guy I saw every day, hung out with, talked to and then in the blink of an eye, eight seconds, the time of one play, his life is changed forever. His life is gone.
“That really made me think that there are bigger things in life than just football. So, you should just have fun while you’re doing it. Play today for today.”
He might have added “forget the past” and “look to the future.” He has had a problem with that – forgetting the past. Not years that have passed, but seconds. The few seconds that it takes to run a play.
In every team sport, players make mistakes. “No one is perfect,” Barnes said, then laughed. “Not even Michael (Jordan).
“He was close. He’s the closest thing to it. I don’t remember him having too many bad games.”
Barnes thought there was one other guy approaching perfection. Himself.
Then he discovered something. He has flaws. And those flaws had claws. They dug into him and wouldn’t let go.
It happened during the first half of last season. Barnes was struggling. He knew it. His coaches knew it.
“It was a mind thing,” he said. “I thought I was perfect and I thought if I got beat on a play, it was the end of the world. And you can’t have that in your brain.
“You’ve got to have a short memory. If something goes wrong, it’s got to go out the window. You’ve got to forget about it and go on to the next play.”
Barnes felt he was able to do that in the second half of the season. “I just changed my whole attitude,” he said. “I realized that if I set my mind to it, I can be the best at this position in the conference.”
The Sporting News and Street &Smith’s magazine agreed. They picked him on the preseason All-Pac-10 squad.
Now it’s up to Barnes, a 6-foot-5, 310-pound senior, to make it happen.
When he lines up at left tackle against Fresno State for his first play of the season this afternoon, it’ll be his 38th consecutive start. He’s been a fixture in the starting lineup since making the conversion from defense to offense during practice for the 2001 Rose Bowl.
He seems adamant about making this his best season ever and about getting the Huskies back into a bowl game. “I didn’t like that at all (last season),” he said, “sitting at home watching other guys play in bowl games we should have played in.”
He had a good training camp and is in the best shape of his life. His body fat is 11 percent, very low for a guy that big, but then he’s careful about what he eats. Plenty of fruits and vegetables – even spinach. “It’s an acquired taste,” he said.
For the most part, he eschews fast foods, though he’ll make an occasional foray to McDonald’s. “You’ve got to have a little fat in your diet,” he reasoned.
Because he has such a high metabolism – “I’m always running or doing something” – it wasn’t easy for him to crack 300 pounds, which is almost a prerequisite for playing in the offensive line today.
This time next year, Barnes could be suiting up for an NFL team – he’s ranked among the top 20 tackles in the country – but if you’d talked to him when he was in middle school, he’d have told you that he’d someday be making a living as an NBA player, not as a pro football lineman.
He wasn’t even playing football at the time. Basketball was his game. “I was one of those kids who was always playing basketball with the older kids in the park,” he said.
He was a large lad even then and the football coach talked him into turning out. By the end of his sophomore year, Barnes was starting on the varsity.
Now he’s heading into the final season of his amateur career and the final quarter of his academic career. He’ll have his degree in December.
Then, presumably, a pro football career. After that, he’ll really find out that there are bigger things in life than football.
His parents raised three children of their own and provided a home for numerous foster kids over the last three decades, and he, too, would like to work with kids in some capacity in his post-football career, “trying to get them involved in sports and off the streets.
“Something that helps give them a chance to have the same experience I’ve had.”
A football player with a life and dreams beyond the field.
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