Marion Barber III, Bruising Running Back for Cowboys, Dies at 38
Nicknamed “Marion the Barbarian,” he had a nose for the end zone, leading the N.F.C. in touchdowns in 2006. But his post-playing years were troubled.
Marion Barber III, a bruising running back for the Dallas Cowboys who regularly busted into the end zone but whose life took a downward turn after his playing days were over, was found dead on Wednesday in his home in Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas. He was 38.
A Frisco police spokesman said that officers responded to an unspecified “welfare concern” at Barber’s rented apartment and found him dead. In recent years he had run-ins with the police and was once hospitalized for a mental health evaluation.
Barber, whose father, Marion Jr., was a running back for the Jets in the 1980s, had a seven-year career in which he was known for bulling his way through defenders and squeezing out yardage in small spaces. A teammate, the Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens, told The Associated Press in 2007: “He kind of challenges people and dares not to be stopped. It’s sort of barbaric.”
Owens said he gave him the nickname “Marion the Barbarian,” and it stuck.
Bill Parcells, who coached the Cowboys from 2003 to ’06, told The Dallas Morning News on Thursday that Barber “was almost like a perfect player,” adding, “He could run, block, he could catch, he was tough and he was always there.”
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Barber rarely started in his first three seasons but soon made himself an integral part of the Cowboys’ offense. In 2006, his second season, he gained 654 yards and led the National Football Conference in touchdowns with 14, nine of them from three yards or less.
In 2007, he ran for 975 yards and 10 touchdowns and was chosen for the Pro Bowl after a season in which he never started a game but outgained the Cowboys’ starting running back Julius Jones by nearly 400 yards. In the postseason, Barber started in the Cowboys’ 21-17 playoff loss to the Giants, running 27 times for 129 yards.
“When Marion Barber III runs,” Greg Bishop wrote in The New York Times in 2008, “dreadlocks flap past his shoulders from behind his helmet. His legs churn at a frightening speed, twin jackhammers working in tandem to punish and propel.”
Barber had solid seasons in 2008 and ’09 but with Felix Jones the primary running back the next season, Barber gained only 374 yards. He was released before the 2011 season and signed with the Chicago Bears, for whom he played his final season as a reserve.
Overall, he gained 4,780 yards on 1,156 rushes. His 47 rushing touchdowns with the Cowboys place him fourth on the team’s career list.
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His post-playing years were troubled. In 2014, Barber was detained by the police in Mansfield, Texas, also outside Dallas, and hospitalized for a mental health evaluation.
And according to police reports, he was arrested in 2019 on two misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief for incidents that occurred the year before in which, while he was out jogging, Barber approached two different cars and struck and damaged them. He pleaded no contest, and his sentence included 12 months of probation.
Last year, the former Dallas wide receiver Dez Bryant posted a highlight reel of Barber’s plays on Twitter and wrote that “he’s down and out bad … we are just a stat and moments to most people.”
On Monday, Bryant wrote on Twitter: “Too much to digest, so much too say … This is real life, it can be any of us. We need each other, we need unity.”
Marion Sylvester Barber III was born on June 10, 1983, in Plymouth, Minn., west of Minneapolis. Like his father, Barber played at the University of Minnesota, where he was part of a powerful backfield with Laurence Maroney. Barber rushed for 1,196 yards and 1,269 yards in 2003 and 2004.
The Cowboys selected him in the fourth round of the 2005 N.F.L. draft.
Football was a family business for the Barbers. In addition to his father, Barber’s brothers Thomas and Dominique also played for the University of Minnesota Gophers. Dominique was a defensive back with the N.F.L.’s Houston Texans.
In a statement on Thursday, P.J. Fleck, the Gophers’ head coach, said, “Marion was one of the best to ever play at Minnesota, and he is a big reason many people are Gopher fans today.”
Nyong'o was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to Dorothy and Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, a politician in Kenya. It is a Luo tradition to name a child after the events of the day, so her parents named her Lupita (a diminutive of "Guadalupe" Our Lady of Guadalupe). She is of completely Luo descent on both sides of her family, and is the second of six children. Her father was the former Kenyan Minister for Medical Services. At the time of Lupita's birth, he was a visiting lecturer in political science at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City, and her family had been living in Mexico for three years.
Nyong'o moved back to Kenya with her parents when she was less than one year old, when her father was appointed a professor at the University of Nairobi. She grew up primarily in Kenya, and describes her upbringing as "middle class, suburban". At age sixteen, her parents sent her back to Mexico for seven months to learn Spanish. During those seven months, Nyong'o lived in Taxco, Mexico, and took classes at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico's Learning Center for Foreigners.
In 2013, her father was elected to represent Kisumu County in the Kenyan Senate. Nyong'o's mother was the managing director of the Africa Cancer Foundation and owned her own communications company. In 2012, her older cousin, Isis Nyong'o, was named one of Africa's most powerful women by Forbes magazine. Her uncle, Aggrey Nyong'o, a prominent Kenyan physician, was killed in a road accident in 2002.
She was fluent in her native Luo, English, Swahili and Spanish. On February 27, 2014, at the Essence Black Women In Hollywood luncheon in Beverly Hills, Lupita gave a speech on black beauty. Lupita talked about a letter she received from a young fan who stated she was unhappy with herself until she saw the actress on the cover of a magazine. In her speech, Lupita talked about the insecurities she had about herself as a teenager; growing up as a dark skinned black girl, women that looked like her were barely portrayed in the media and when they were, they were not deemed as being beautiful. She said her views about herself changed when she saw South Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek become successful.
Nyong'o grew up in an artistic family, where family get-togethers often included performances by the children in the family and trips to see plays. She attended an all-girls school in Kenya and acted in school plays, with a minor role in Oliver Twist being her first play. At age 14, Nyong'o made her professional acting debut as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in a production by the Nairobi, Kenya-based repertory company Phoenix Players. While a member of the Phoenix Players, Nyong'o also performed in the plays "On The Razzle" and "There Goes The Bride". Nyong'o cites the performances of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple with inspiring her to pursue a professional acting career.
Nyong'o attended college in the United States. After graduating from Hampshire College with a degree in film and theatre studies, she worked on the production crew of many films, including Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener, with Ralph Fiennes, Mira Nair's The Namesake, and Salvatore Stabile's Where God Left His Shoes. She cites Fiennes as another individual who inspired her to pursue a professional acting career.
She starred in the 2008 short film East River, directed by Marc Grey and shot in Brooklyn, New York. She returned to Kenya in 2008 and starred in the Kenyan television series Shuga, an MTV Base Africa/UNICEF drama about HIV/AIDS prevention. In 2009, she wrote, directed, and produced the documentary In My Genes, about the treatment of Kenya's albino population, which played at several film festivals and won first prize at the 2008 Five College Film Festival. Nyong'o also directed the The Little Things You Do music video by Wahu featuring Bobi Wine, which was nominated for the Best Video Award at the MTV Africa Music Awards 2009.
Nyong'o subsequently enrolled in the acting program at the Yale School of Drama. At Yale she appeared in many stage productions, including Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter's Tale. While at Yale, she was the recipient of the Herschel Williams Prize "awarded to acting students with outstanding ability" during the 2011–2012 school year.
Nyong'o landed her breakout role when she was cast in 12 Years a Slave immediately before graduating from Yale with an MFA in 2012. The film was released in 2013 to great critical acclaim. Nyong'o received rave reviews for her performance, and was nominated for several awards including a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and two Screen Actors Guild Awards including Best Supporting Actress, which she won. She also co-starred in Liam Neeson's 2014 film Non-Stop.
On March 2, 2014, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the sixth black actress to win the award.
In 2014, she was chosen as one of the faces for Miu Miu's Spring 2014 campaign, with Elizabeth Olsen, Elle Fanning and Bella Heathcote. She also appeared on the covers of several magazines, including New York's Spring 2014 fashion issue and UK magazine Dazed & Confused. She was also a regular on Harper's Bazaar's Derek Blasberg's Best Dressed List.
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