James Smith a.k.a. Barbershop Jay, first discovered his love for sports talk and sports in general at the age of five, when his grandfather taught him how to read boxscores and stats in the sports section of the local newspaper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, in addition to watching games on TV. His love of sports continued on through college at Ohio University where he was the the starting SG on the school’s Intramural squad, in addition to majoring in Journalism and Communication. From there he became the resident sports talk personality for “Today’s Cut & Style, a barbershop located in Cleveland, Ohio where various sports talk personalities such as Chris Broussard, and former NFL players Herman Arvie and NBA legend Charles Oakley were among its patrons. He also was a member of the “More sports with Les Levine’s” sports talk panel, and co-host of the internet sports talk show, “Head to Head”, having interviewed such sports personalities as former NFL FILMS Steve Sabol And Bill Romanowski. After “Head to Head” was cancelled, he went on to create his own internet sports talk show based on the barbershop and The Shop Report came to life.