Barrier was born in Concord, North Carolina in 1916, and was a 1934 graduate of Concord High School and a 1938 graduate of the University of North Carolina. After graduation, he became a sportswriter at his hometown paper, The Concord Daily Tribune from 1938 to 1941, before moving to the Greensboro Daily News. He became the Daily News sports editor in 1944 and later the Daily Record, which merged to become the Greensboro News & Record. Barrier's account of UCLA's Lew Alcindor in the 1967 UCLA-Dayton game in the 1967 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament earned him a spot in the book "Best Sports Stories 1970".
Writing about UCLA's national champion basketball teams under John Wooden, he said, "Mister John Wooden has a watch factory out in Los Angeles. It's a bit different from most Swiss works. They don't make watches, they win 'em."[3]