10 February 6-12, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | News | letters | coNteNts | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | That chair now resides in Rivera’s house as a reminder. To this day, he remains the official barber for the football team, and for most of the athletes on campus. This past season, he visited the football facility every Thursday to tend to the hair of superstar duo of quarterback Cam Ward and wide receiver Xavier Restrepo. “I just love the way he does my hair and he’s also a great guy,” Restrepo, who has been sitting in Rivera’s chair for three years now, confirms. “He keeps it real. Anything he sees from a game, he’ll let me know. I appreciate him a lot — we’ve done a lot of business to- gether. It’s bigger than just a haircut or foot- ball at this point.” By 2009, word that the Hurricanes had their own barber had spread far and wide. When the University of Florida’s football team came to Miami to face the University of Oklahoma for the national championship, Mike and Markice Pouncey, Joe Haden, and Branden Spikes all sought out Rivera for fresh cuts ahead of the game. “A friend of mine worked for Florida at the time, and she actually knew the Pounceys, and they found out I cut hair here. And it was like, ‘Yo, we need a barber,” Rivera says. “For the bowl games, teams are in town for a whole week, so of course their hair’s growing. They need a haircut.” The Gators won the title game, 24-14, and with it the national title. Two years later, the Miami Dolphins drafted Mike Pouncey, and a major opportunity presented itself. 4. Turning Heads Rivera recently completed his 11th year as the official team barber for the Miami Dol- phins, a job that entails visiting the team’s practice facility every Friday and Saturday to tend to players and coaches alike, including head coach Mike McDaniel. His rates range from $65 up to $300. Football players wear helmets. But they take their haircuts seriously. For some it’s a superstition, others say it is just a matter of looking and feeling good when they take the field. All around college and across the NFL, players are particular about who touches their head, to the point where the barber can become part of the team. “Every time I get a cut, I score a touchdown on the weekend,” Xavier Restrepo tells New Times en route to an Atlantic Coast Con- ference-leading 1,127 receiving yards and 11 touchdown receptions in 2024 before declaring for the 2025 NFL draft. “Steve got the lucky hands. It’s also a lit- tle bit of just me wanting to, you know, feel good.” The Miami Dol- phins consider it im- portant enough that they were one of the first NFL teams to include a barbershop in their “players lounge” when they constructed a new facility in 2021. “Honestly, we’re as important as the nutri- tionist, the strength and conditioning coaches, and their actual position coaches,” says Rivera. “Eventually they’re going to have to put us on the payroll. We’re going to have to be flying with the teams everywhere. The last thing you want to do is to be in another state and have to find a barber. I told Coach McDaniel that.” Rivera credits Mike Pouncey for making it all happen. Until the Dolphins drafted Pouncey, Rivera didn’t have a single NFL player in his appointment book. “Once he got signed by the Dolphins and drafted in the first round, he was like, ‘I’m going to make it my mission to have guys on the Dolphins getting cuts by you,’” Ri- vera says. “Guys would al- ways complain, ‘Man, we got to get a barber,’ and, ‘We got to run and get a haircut before we get on the plane,” Pouncey says. “So when that opportu- nity came about, it was like marriage. He was just the right fit.” More than a de- cade later, the two have moved beyond a barber-patron re- lationship, even though Pouncey is a Gator for life and Rivera a hardcore UM fan. When Pouncey’s son took his first steps, Rivera was there. Same thing when Dolphins cornerback Jalen Ramsey was traded to the Dolphins from the Los Angeles Rams in March 2023. “When I got traded down here in Miami, it was like I needed to get connected with him immediately,” Ramsey says. “I got connected with him even before going to the facility. He pulled up on me at the hotel I was staying at and it just went from there. We got our banter going back and forth with Florida State, with me being a ‘Nole and him obviously ‘Canes Barber.’ “There’s not a room he can’t go in, he’ll bring the light right in there,” Ramsey contin- ues. “Even though he’s a Canes fan, he showed up at the Pro Bowl last year wearing my high school jersey. Like, showing hella love. That just shows who he is. He doesn’t want anything in return.” Let it also be known that Rivera is the man behind the transformation that caught the in- ternet by storm when Mike McDaniel showed up at Dolphins practice in August with a curly mop and scraggly beard that wouldn’t look out of place on a South Beach cocaine dealer, a jarring departure from the head coach’s prior coif. “McDaniel looks like that one kid you grew up with from Kendall that started a SoundCloud,” a user wrote on X when McDaniel’s new look went viral. Rivera does not take credit for McDaniel’s flashy shades. “That’s all Coach, he says.” 5. A Man, a Plan, a Van In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck and barbershops were compelled to shut down. Rivera’s longtime friend, fellow Miami native and veteran NFL quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, recalled how the Canes Barber had helped out his high school alma mater, Miami Northwestern every summer, cutting the team’s hair free of charge prior to the first day of school — a tradition that con- tinues to this day. So Bridgewater came to his friend with a question: “How can I help take you to the next level?” No one had ever put it to Rivera that way. He pitched Bridgewater the idea of buying a van and creating a mobile barbershop. Then he found a Sprinter for sale on OfferUp. Bridgewater cut a check. “He was like, ‘All right, if you like it, I love it,” Rivera says now. “He literally pulled out his checkbook and signed a check. He was like, ‘Steve, I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to keep going, keep giving back to the community, and that’s how you’ll pay me off.’ Because he remembered what I did for him.” Formerly a popup business proprietor by necessity, Rivera was suddenly mobile by choice — and traveling first class: Bridgewa- ter ponied up another $50,000 to outfit the vehicle with luxury accoutrements and the same angry-faced cyclone figure Rivera wears around his neck. The autographs on the Sprinter’s interior walls include a handful written in gold ink, reserved for players or coaches who have won a Super Bowl. The trading cards are also signed. The mural wall, which separates the shop from the front cabin, is reserved for those who played a part in Rivera’s journey, including UM alums Edgerrin James (‘96- ’98), Lance Leggett, Jacory Harris (‘08-’11), Allen Hurns, Phillip Dorsett (‘11-’14), and An- gel Rodriguez (‘14-’16). “If it wasn’t for Harris’ ‘U Swag’ haircut I drew, no one would know who I am,” Rivera notes, pointing to the now-retired QB’s like- ness. (Since 2020, Harris has worked for Mi- ami-Dade County as a firefighter.) Crew Cutter from 8 The walls inside Rivera’s Sprinter van are decorated with the autographs of his clients. Super Bowl winners sign in gold. The cover of the May 13-19, 2010, issue of New Times, which featured a profile of Hugo “Juice” Tandrón, official barber for the team formerly known as the Florida Marlins.
