A Haircut at Rutgers From a Super Bowl Champion

Tim Wright is a larger than life human being. The New Jersey-native and former Rutgers wide receiver spent parts of several seasons in the NFL, including a Super Bowl win with the New England Patriots during the 2014-2015 season. After a torn ACL later derailed his career, Tim used the lessons he learned on the gridiron and transitioned into a successful entrepreneur.

I met Tim when I interviewed him for my other podcast, The Morning Spotlight, which we recorded over Zoom. He was there to discuss a new business venture he was involved with called Dome Audio, which is attempting to be the “future of sound.” You could feel the passion and energy with which Tim discussed these headphones and you know he believes in them. In doing my research on Tim, I found out he also owned a barbershop called The Wright Cut. We discussed it briefly, but that was it, it didn’t really fit into what we were doing during our episode.

When we launched Greetings From the Garden State, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to not only discuss it, but meet Tim in person. We got it all set up and I drove down to Rutgers. Tim described how after a bad haircut he got as a child, his dad bought a pair of clippers and started cutting his son’s hair. Tim eventually started experimenting on himself, got good at it, started cutting his friends’ hair in his neighborhood in Neptune, and it started growing. Eventually when he got to Rutgers, he would sit in the football team’s locker room cutting his teammates’ hair, his coaches’ and their children. If you have a good barber, you know there are few places more community-based than a barbershop.

Eventually Tim went on to the NFL, but after his injury returned to campus to rehab. Over time he brought The Wright Cut to campus as the first barbershop on the campus of any major university and the dream is to expand to other campuses around the country.

In the fall of 2020, albeit a semester during the pandemic, Rutgers reported 35,844 undergraduate and 14,567 graduate students. Obviously not all of these students are on campus all the time, some live at home, some live off campus, but the one thing that is worth noting is the diversity of Rutgers. According to bestcollegereviews.org, Rutgers ranks as having the 38th most diverse student population, which makes sense since it’s in New Jersey.

To me, that is another great example of the community of New Jersey. Tim and his team (he has eight chairs and they are full on just about any given night) are inclusive, accommodating, and aware of the different needs each culture, person, gender, etc. needs in order to look good and feel good. The Wright Cut is a microcosm of New Jersey as a whole. It’s diverse clientele represents the diversity around the state, it’s community atmosphere drives collaboration and inclusion, and it is clearly a model that can work around the country.

You can listen to the full episode here: https://linktr.ee/greetingsfromthegardenstate