Crew Cutter: Meet Steven Rivera, Team Barber for the Miami Dolphins and Hurricanes

1. Have Clippers, Will Travel

Late on a Thursday evening, former Miami Dolphins offensive lineman Mike Pouncey arrives home from coaching his 11-year-old son's football team. He drops the football equipment inside his house before heading outside to a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van parked in front.

Inside the Sprinter, the decor is all football: a mural depicting an assortment of NFL stars, a case filled with trading cards, a flat-screen TV silently broadcasting Thursday Night Football. But it's the van's central furnishing that Pouncey is here for: a professional-issue barber's chair, gleaming gold like a throne. More precisely, the ex-NFLer has an appointment with the throne's owner, Steven Rivera, who lays out the tools of his trade as Pouncey settles into the chair.

As is his habit, Rivera is decked out in University of Miami gear, though not enough to mask the tattoos that adorn his six-foot-tall-frame, representing his Miami-Dade upbringing and his love for South Florida sports teams. Around his neck is a heavy chain from which hangs a custom-made pendant: a diamond-encrusted cyclone accented with a tiny gold scissors set and clipper guard.

The softspoken 38-year-old has been cutting Pouncey's hair ever since the latter was a junior at the University of Florida. Over the past two decades, as the team barber for the Miami Dolphins and the Miami Hurricanes football squads, he has tended to the heads of Tyreek Hill, Deion Sanders, and Randy Moss, among scores of others. His cutting skills have taken him to the Super Bowl and allowed him to work with players he spent his childhood admiring from afar as a fan.

"I bleed orange and green, so I take pride in the colors of the Hurricanes, and not only them but the Dolphins too," he tells New Times with unmistakable reverence. "Being able to represent both is a blessing, and I don't take it for granted at all."

It has been a long journey to this point for the 38-year-old who originally embarked on a career in law enforcement but is now known far and wide as "Canes Barber."

2. First Cut

An only child, Rivera grew up moving in and out of efficiencies and duplexes in West Perrine. Both of his parents were undocumented immigrants: Gladys from El Salvador, José from Honduras. "My dad had a stable job, but it just didn't, you know, pay enough for us to live a nice life growing up," Rivera says. "I grew up, we call it nowadays, 'free lunch in school.' That's what I would have to depend on when I went to elementary, middle, and high school: the free-lunch line. I would literally be the first one there eating breakfast and lunch — and pray that I have dinner at home."

He recalls seeing people coming in and out of their home constantly. At first he didn't understand why; he later learned that Gladys, who'd worked as a hairdresser in her home country, offered manicures, pedicures, and haircuts on the side to help the family make ends meet. To his dismay, she also cut Rivera's hair. He recalls seeing his middle-school classmates sporting "fresh haircuts and fresh lineup" and asking them where they got their haircuts. "The barbershop," they said.

"I asked my mom, She's like, 'No, I'm cutting your hair. It's too much money.' And back then, haircuts weren't that expensive. Like, what was like, $8, $10? But again, we couldn't afford that, and I didn't understand at the time."

"I would sit there and just be observant of the barbers and what exactly they used, what guards, what clippers."

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So Rivera decided he'd teach himself to cut his own hair. He bought some cheap clippers and walked to a South Miami-Dade barbershop to observe. He was the only Hispanic kid in the Black-owned establishment. "Literally, I would sit there and just be observant of the barbers and what exactly they used, what guards, what clippers," he recounts. "And eventually, I was like, 'Man, okay, I see what he's doing. I'ma try that on my own.'"

After he saved up enough money, he treated himself to a skin fade at the barbershop. Then, every three days, he'd touch it up himself at home with a razor. From there he honed his skills by cutting other neighborhood kids' hair. His specialty was the "Even Steven," in which the hair is cut to the same length all around.

Apart from his growing interest in barbering, Rivera was a hardcore sports fan, the Miami Hurricanes in particular. A friend fed his passion, inviting him to football games at the Orange Bowl. "I would hang up newspaper clippings — I loved the newspaper when I was little," Rivera says. "I would always look forward to Sundays, or even Miami New Times — like, I'd look forward to seeing the photos in those articles."

In particular, he recalls coming across a New Times cover story that hit close to home, a profile of Hugo "Juice" Tandrón, the in-house barber for the then-Florida Marlins (and the only team barber in Major League Baseball at the time). "When I saw him on that cover, it pushed me to be like, 'One day that's going to be me,'" Rivera says, adding that he kept the cover and had it framed — it's now displayed at his house. "It just motivated me: You know what? One day I'm gonna meet him. I'm gonna follow his path." (When asked who cuts the Canes Barber's hair now that he's a pro, Rivera says, "Hugo.")

3. "You Think You Can Line Me Up?"

But by tenth grade, Rivera was working to support his family, and soon after graduation in 2004, he enrolled at the police academy, drawn by the financial security of a career in law enforcement. In 2006, following his graduation from the academy, he got a job at the Dade Correctional Institution near Homestead as a correctional officer. A little less than two years later, however, after failing to notify his superiors that he knew one of the inmates, he was terminated.

Rivera describes it as the lowest moment of his life. He was evicted from his apartment and still had to help provide for his parents. Then a silver lining appeared, in the form of Javarris James.

During his time working at the prison, Rivera had forged a friendship with the then-University of Miami running back (a cousin of former UM great and NFL Hall of Fame running back Edgerrin James), who paid regular visits to his older brother, who was serving a sentence on drug charges.

"Javarris saw how I was struggling and I just wasn't myself anymore," Rivera says. "One day he asked, 'Steve, who cuts your hair?' I was like, 'Oh I cut my own.' He goes, 'Oh, you think you can line me up before our game this week?'"

"He was lying to everybody, talking about how, 'Steve knows how to cut hair! He cuts mine!'"

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Rivera thought nothing of doing a solid for a friend, but James had other ideas. After a few weekly dates for game-day tuneups, he introduced his personal barber to his UM teammates. "It just shows there's still good people out there," Rivera says, still overcome with emotion at the memory. "He didn't have to do that. He was lying to everybody, talking about how, 'Steve knows how to cut hair! He cuts mine!' Mind you, I didn't really know how to cut hair. I only knew the most basic stuff."

A pair of UM students who shared a dorm room lent him the space to set up a makeshift barbershop. When their building fell to the wrecking ball, another loyal customer invited Rivera to relocate to the Mahoney dorm. Soon the line of students wanting Steven Rivera to cut their hair stretched down the hall. "I would literally be there from 4 p.m. all the way to one or two in the morning, cutting nonstop," Rivera remembers. "I'm telling everybody, 'Yeah, I know how to cut hair.' Little did they know I was practicing on them."

One semester led to another, and Rivera became a staple on campus. Every year new athletes would arrive knowing their go-to barber would be Rivera on the seventh floor of Mahoney. He was the architect of former quarterback Jacory Harris' signature cuts, including the "U Swag." Over the years, he cut the likes of Lance Leggett ('04-'06), Mike James ('09-'12), Herb Waters ('12-'15), Stephen Morris ('10-'13), and Allen Hurns ('10-'13).

Before he knew it, he'd acquired a nickname: "Canes Barber."
It was that same increasing popularity that proved to be Rivera's downfall, brought on in 2012 courtesy of a rules-obsessed resident advisor. "I remember like it was yesterday," Rivera says. "I was on the seventh floor and she came in there and gave me a warning. And then the following week she came with security and was like, 'You gotta go. You don't belong here.'"

Rivera went home and cried. But the setback was short-lived: Angel Rodriguez, point guard and captain of UM's basketball team, gathered his teammates and approached UM's Athletics Compliance Office and then-head hoops coach Jim Larrañaga about installing a barber's chair in the locker room.

That chair now resides in Rivera's house as a reminder. To this day, he remains the 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 together. It's bigger than just a haircut or football 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 Brandon 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 Dolphins' team barber, 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. Steve got the lucky hands."

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"Every time I get a cut, I score a touchdown on the weekend," Xavier Restrepo tells New Times en route to an Atlantic Coast Conference-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 little bit of just me wanting to, you know, feel good."

The Miami Dolphins consider it important 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 nutritionist, 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,'" Rivera says.

"Guys would always 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 opportunity came about, it was like marriage. He was just the right fit."

More than a decade later, the two have moved beyond a barber-patron relationship, 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 continues. "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 internet 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 continues 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.

Bridgewater came to his friend with a question: "How can I help take you to the next level?"

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"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: Bridgewater 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 Angel 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 likeness. (Since 2020, Harris has worked for Miami-Dade County as a firefighter.)
Thanks to social media, Rivera's tricked-out mobile barbershop drew an onslaught of mainstream coverage, including features in the Athletic, Sports Illustrated, and the Sun Sentinel. As word spread, he found himself draping his chair cloth over customers he'd never dreamed of meeting, much less counting among his clients, such as Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders, who still visits Rivera for a cut when he comes to town.

"Mind you, I've cut a lot of athletes, but when he sat in my chair, I was sweating. Because you can't mess up Deion — that's Prime," Rivera says with a laugh. "You mess him up, well, he's gonna tell you about it."

The most unusual destination for an appointment with a player? An airport runway.

"When I first got the Sprinter van, [University of Florida alum and NFL vet] Trent Brown was flying in on a private jet, and he was like, 'Hey, I'm landing at such-and-such time. Can you pull up to the runway?'" Rivera says, adding that he had a friend capture video of the scene for posterity.

All the while, Rivera has never forgotten what got him to this point. A tattoo on his neck reads, "Made in Dade County."

In fact, he still works full-time for the county, ensuring its public playing fields are maintained. He says he put in notice in early 2023 that he'd be retiring but hasn't been able to bring himself to follow through. "I always said like, 'You know what, Steve, if you ever make it to a certain place in life, always remember where you came from. Always give back, regardless of where you're at in life, make sure that' s a priority.'"

To that end, he partnered with fellow Dolphins barber Jose Madduro to open the Players Lounge Barbershop in Davie. Named after the shop inside the Dolphins facility, the grooming establishment opened in April 2024. A second location in Miami Gardens is slated to open soon near Hard Rock Stadium.

"I preach to my team of barbers, 'You guys want to get to a certain level, you got to give back,'" Rivera shares. "'It's not always about making money. Be mindful that you were once that kid that wished they could get a haircut from a barber who cuts their favorite athlete.

"When we go do these events with the Boys & Girls Club, the kids are like in awe," he adds.

Rivera's workstation in the plush space is easy to spot — it's the one with the football jersey that reads "Canes Barber."

Rivera's father painted the shop's interior. Every Sunday, father and son spend the day cleaning the place top to bottom — a ritual Rivera sticks to as an excuse to spend more time with his dad.

Last May, Hall of Fame wide receiver Randy Moss walked through the door for a haircut, holding a signed football. It was a full-circle moment for the 38-year-old barber, whose chair at that moment was occupied by Lance Leggett, one of his first customers back at the UM dorms.

"With his country accent, he goes, 'Hey, is there a Steve here? There a Canes Barber in here?' I was shocked," Rivera says. I'm cutting Lance. He's sitting in my chair, and he's seeing his favorite player walk through the door — like out of all possible places, walking into this barbershop."