His father, Robert, 50, a tall, barrel-chested man who works as a security guard at a public library, made the all-Public League team at Olney High School as a defensive back and wide receiver and watches his son's every move on the field, having taught him to play with heart.
His mother, Cynthia, 49, a longtime community organizer who works in the Mayor's Office of Community Services, does the same for her son in the neighborhood.
Since 2007, the year Barnes entered high school, 130 people have been shot within a half-mile of his North Philadelphia home, and at least 20 have been slain. Tragedy has also darkened his family. Barnes' uncle was shot and killed at 21. That uncle's son was also shot and killed at 21, buried this summer. And Barnes and his brothers have friend after friend who have been killed in gun violence.
"I worry about them," Cynthia Barnes says, as protective as a tigress over her cubs. "We were blessed to have five good kids, but there are some who didn't have the same type of parenting. That's why I would rather for them to be in the house."
The idea to send her son on an eight-mile trek to Northeast High by foot, subway, and bus - a round trip that consumes two hours of his day - belongs to her.
"I wanted a school to want him for his grades," she says. "It was never about football."
Then again, it's always about football.
First to go to college
On the cluttered television stand across from Barnes' unmade bed, a half-dozen of his sister's shoe boxes are stuffed with college offers and brochures.
Barnes, 17, heads to the kitchen wearing baggy shorts and a T-shirt from one of the 13 colleges throwing scholarship dollars his way, thinking only of breakfast.
The youngest of five, he will be the first among them to enter college.
