NEW VARSITY, INC.

MILLION-DOLLAR QUARTERBACKS, PLAYING-CARD ENTREPRENEURS, AND THE HIGH-STAKES SCRAMBLE FOR CASH IN THE HIGH SCHOOL NAME-IMAGE-AND-LIKENESS ERA

- BY ABIGAIL COVINGTON

Julian Lewis with his Lamborghini Urus outside of Boulder, Colorado. The endorsement deals he landed as a star high school quarterback in Georgia allowed him to buy a few pricey rides. This fall he'll be playing for Deion Sanders at the University of Colorado. Photograph by Benjamin Rasmussen

THANK GOD JULIAN LEWIS PLAYED HIS high school football in Georgia.

Otherwise, dear Coco might not still be with us. Back in the spring, Coco, the seventeen-year-old star quarterback's beloved miniature dachshund, got sick—like three-days-in-the-ICU, emergency-surgery, wipe-out-your-savings kind of sick. But because the Peach State lets high school athletes make money off endorsements, Lewis could afford the $11,000 vet bill. He was also able to buy himself a Tesla Cybertruck (starting price $79,900). And a Dodge Ram TRX (starting price $98,335). And a Lamborghini Urus (starting price $241,843). And, just for fun, a Darth Vader chain encrusted with black diamonds, too (price undisclosed).

Would he have been able to pay for these things without endorsement deals as a high school athlete? I ask a shirtless Lewis over FaceTime in June. He's just returned home from a workout at the University of Colorado. The quarterback from Carrollton, Georgia, whose nickname is "JuJu," was ranked No. 2 on the 2025 ESPN 300 list of the top recruits in the country. This fall he's competing to be the starter as a true freshman on Coach Deion Sanders's buzzy team.

“No. Impossible,” he tells me before he's interrupted by a loud series of woofs coming from upstairs. It's his new dog, an enormous gray-blue cane corso named Smoke with a loud bark. “I mean, we weren't poor, but we weren't financially on the hierarchy of the earth. Definitely no big black chains.” Safe to say no Lamborghinis, either.