Colorado freshman quarterback Julian “JuJu” Lewis doesn’t turn 18 years old until September and still needs to add more beef to a body that weighs less than 200 pounds. But he’s already in the middle of the biggest storyline of the season for his new head coach, Deion Sanders.

As a top recruit out of Carrollton, Georgia, Lewis also has a business agent, his own branded line of merchandise and an ownership stake in a company that aims to democratize name, image and likeness deals for college players (NIL).

In many ways, this makes him the poster child of this wild new era of college sports. His father even makes sure he knows his roles.

 “He’s always reminding me that I have two jobs: QB and entrepreneur,” Lewis said.

Lewis agreed to discuss these dual ambitions in an email interview with USA TODAY Sports. Both roles are being boosted by a company that he partly owns called Fanstake, where fans can pay to lure recruits to their favorite college teams by contributing to their NIL deals.

By the end of June, Lewis said he plans to announce at least three other equity deals besides Fanstake and will have four other active NIL deals before the season. Beyond that, Lewis hopes to win the battle to replace Shedeur Sanders as CU’s next starting quarterback and then use Fanstake as a tool to lure top recruits to Colorado.

The goal is to seize all of these opportunities in Boulder, where the spotlight will include at least four CU games on ESPN or Fox in the first month of the season, but with no guarantee that Lewis will play in any of them.

Lewis part of battle to replace Shedeur Sanders

After Lewis signed with Colorado Dec. 4, Liberty transfer quarterback Kaidon Salter committed to CU two weeks later with one season of college eligibility remaining.

Did Lewis know when he committed to CU that the Buffaloes would bring in another QB for 2025?

Might he split time with Salter this season or consider redshirting?

The interview was edited for clarity and length and was arranged through the company.

∎ USA TODAY Sports: Before you committed and signed with CU late last year, did you know CU might later bring in a transfer QB? 

“Coach Prime runs this like an NFL team,” Lewis said. “Plus every program in college football is always going to try and get better and have depth at every position. You can’t even prepare for the season without enough QBs on the roster.”

∎ What did CU say about maybe bringing in another QB before you signed with CU?

“CU is about development and competition,” Lewis said. “The only thing I was looking for as a recruit was to be coached by great coaches and have an opportunity to compete as a freshman. I’ve been competing for QB jobs since I was 7. I joined a team at 10 that already had a QB, I competed every day against the guy who was there, and we ended up winning the Battle Youth National Championship that season and I threw 70 touchdown passes.”

Lewis also provided a reminder that he competed for the starting job in high school, too, where he played for the Carrollton Trojans in Georgia.

“Carrollton had kids who grew up wanting to be Trojans and I moved there,” Lewis said. “I wasn’t recruited by (coach) Joey King or asked to come. I made a decision to go and compete at the end of 7th grade. Then, going into 9th grade, I had to compete again for the varsity job. I’m not the kid who was ever handed jobs. My story is different. People just see the results and assume I’ve had some easy path. Other guys’ dads coached teams, and they were automatically the QB. My dad took me to the hardest coaches and toughest programs, and I always had to earn it. Anything different and this wouldn’t be my story.”

∎ Do you see CU picking one QB to go with in the fall season or maybe playing at least two on a situational basis because you have different styles? 

“Coach Prime and Coach (Pat) Shurmur are going to put me in the best position to develop and our team in the best position to win. I have total faith in that. And I’ve got a lot of work to do in a little bit of time, so I’m ready when my coaches say I’m ready.”

∎ Do you plan to add a certain amount of weight as some new players do out of high school? 

“I’ve gained 15lbs since January,” Lewis wrote. “I’ll probably put on whatever I can add before we get into pads and that will be what it is for this season.”

Lewis is now up to 198 pounds on his 6-foot-1 frame. He normally would be headed into his senior season of high school in 2025, but he reclassified to start college a year earlier.

∎ How is your NIL business going and how important is that to your college career? 

“I’m blessed to be a part of this era in college and high school sports,” Lewis replied. “There are thousands of great athletes who came before us who didn’t have the opportunities today. NIL has nothing to do with my college career; football and NIL are two very separate things. Football is my priority. I have a responsibility to myself, my teammates, and my university to become the best player that I can be. NIL is going well, I’m thankful for the opportunities that I have. My dad and my team have done a really good job creating opportunities for me.”

How Lewis plans to use company to boost CU roster

∎ How did you get involved with Fanstake and what appealed to you about it?

“When I heard about Fanstake, I was immediately interested because it allows players to help each other and their potential programs. At the end of the day we all want to win, and that’s not possible without great teammates around you. The thought of fans being able to support their team and future players during the recruiting process is what made it a ‘no brainer’ for me.”

Lewis also said he looks forward to “using them next portal season to bring in players to join us at CU.”

One way he could do this is by encouraging CU fans to contribute money toward luring a player on Fanstake. The company started in November and already has more than 20,000 users, according to Greg Glass, the company’s co-founder.

One example shows how Fanstake works. Five-star basketball prospect Nate Ament was wooed by Louisville fans who crowdfunded a combined $88,000 on Fanstake for him if he signed with the Cardinals. He instead decided to sign with Tennessee, whose fans had pledged only about $13,000.

The Louisville fans who put money down for Ament got their money returned since Ament signed with a different team. The $13,000 from Tennessee fans instead goes toward Ament’s sponsorship deal with Fanstake.

“It helps democratize this landscape a little bit because even if you can’t write a half-million-dollar check, you can get 100,000 fans to write $10 checks, or whatever it might be,” Glass told USA TODAY Sports.

Fanstake partnered with Lewis after he made his decision to commit to the Buffaloes. The deal appealed to him, Glass said, because it was a way to bring in more talent to Boulder.

“He wanted to make sure it wasn’t just his NIL, but that he had a squad around him that was going to be secure,” Glass said.

The ‘last thing’ Julian Lewis is worried about

Lewis still made it clear where his NIL endeavors fit into his decision to join the Buffs after previously committing to play at Southern California.

∎ Was NIL part of your decision to go to CU?

“No it wasn’t,” Lewis replied. “It really came down to where I wanted to live and the opportunity to follow Shedeur who everyone knew was leaving for the NFL.”

∎ NIL is part of some players’ decisions to stay at a particular school. Would it be for you going forward? If so, how? 

“That’s the last thing I’m worried about, right,” Lewis replied. “I’m a Buff.”

∎ Because of your youth compared to Kaidon Salter’s experience, some have wondered if you might be a candidate to redshirt this year. Nothing has been decided about that. But would you be open to that if it was ever suggested to you? 

“I’m going to compete everyday and prepare for my freshman season,” he stated.

∎ What are your plans this summer?

“I will be in Boulder for the summer, taking classes and working out.”

∎ By chance do you go back to The Sink in Boulder to have the JuJu burger that the restaurant named after you? 

“No not yet.”

∎ For those who don’t know, how did you get the nickname “JuJu”? 

“My older sister started calling me JuJu when I was like 3.”

Colorado opens the season Aug. 29 against Georgia Tech in a home game on ESPN.

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com

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• J Batt, Michigan State’s new athletic director, faces navigating the university’s political landscape and uniting its power brokers.
• Batt’s financial priorities include boosting fundraising, enhancing the NIL structure, and exploring stadium naming rights.
• Stabilizing the athletic department’s budget, which has seen recent deficits, is another key task for the new AD.

To say Michigan State athletics is in a transitional and transformative period is an understatement.

It might be the most critical juncture for the school since the 1940s, when John Hannah, Ralph Young and Biggie Munn angled to get the Spartans into the Big Ten.

With college sports at a crossroad between their altruistic past and big-money present, MSU’s new athletic director J Batt arrives from Georgia Tech with a task list that will require a sharpened sense of prioritizing from a host of major needs to move the Spartans back to the forefront in the future.

Batt will be publicly introduced during a news conference at 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 4, inside Breslin Center. His contract is expected to be approved by MSU’s Board of Trustees at their next meeting June 13 in Traverse City.

But as Batt begins his job in East Lansing the week of June 16, there will be a litany of tasks on his agenda before the 2025-26 school year begins Aug. 25, with the football season kicking off four days later. Here is a list of five critical things on the to-do list for MSU’s 21st athletic director (and the school’s first outside hire to the position in 30 years).

1. Learn the political landscape

The prevailing belief is that Batt’s biggest tasks are increasing fundraising and enhancing MSU’s name, image and likeness structure — and they undoubtedly are high-ranking priorities — but none of that gets accomplished without the 43-year-old, who grew up in Virginia, first learning to navigate the tricky political ecosystem that has at times been the school’s biggest roadblock.

Save for a 10-year window of solace and success under Mark Hollis from 2007-17, the school’s internal powerbrokers and biggest benefactors externally often have displayed a bad habit of stunting progress with infighting and insolence. Hollis, along with then-president Lou Anna K. Simon, managed to get those forces pulling in one direction before everything was undone by the Larry Nassar scandal, leaving MSU in limbo and with flagging leadership since 2018. Before their abrupt resignations, Hollis and Simon two also gave the school and athletic program a seat at the head table of college sports with their ability to politic at the national and Big Ten levels while assuaging local political and campus leadership.

Both Hollis and Simon were MSU lifers who knew the history and potential landmines; Batt walks in as a complete outsider, as did current president Kevin Guskiewicz a little more than a year ago. They have known each other for about 25 years, Batt said Tuesday on the “MSU Today” podcast, from his time as a soccer player at North Carolina who participated in Guskiewicz’s concussion research projects before he ascended the ranks of academia.

Building relationships quickly in East Lansing is essential. They will rely on each other’s trust, though both new leaders must lean on Hall of Fame basketball coach Tom Izzo’s 40-plus years of experience at the university in navigating those sometimes-turbulent political waters. But pushing for change as an outsider also can create job-altering friction at MSU. Without the support of the right people, even with a visionary approach, the strongest-willed athletic director can wind up with his hands tied.

2. Touch hearts, open wallets

That also includes connecting with donors.

Finding a way to make both the external NIL collectives externally and internal Spartan Fund financially robust will be a major priority. Batt and Guskiezicz (who in March announced a $4 billion university-wide fundraising effort) are tasked with energizing the donor base that — as is the case at many other universities — is fatigued by the growing need for more money to keep major college athletics afloat.

One of Batt’s primary missions will be analyzing the future of Spartan Stadium and drumming up funds for upgrades or replacement. Departed athletic director Alan Haller this winter said MSU must explore selling naming rights to facilities, a move it previously balked at pursuing; Batt must also connect with the right corporate partners to give his new department as big a financial influx as possible.

3. Stabilize MSU’s spending

The athletic department has struggled to balance the books since before Hollis left and the coronavirus pandemic happened.

In 2023-24, MSU operated at a deficit for the fourth time in five years (under Haller and Bill Beekman before him), with nearly $180.5 million in total operating expenses to more than $163.7 million in total operating revenue, according annual documents filed Jan. 13 with the NCAA and obtained that month by the Free Press and the USA TODAY Network.

The more than $16.7 million shortall came a year after operating at an $11.2 million deficit in 2022-23. The athletic department had a $16.35 million surplus during the 2021-22 fiscal year, but its deficit was $17.8 million in 2019-20 and $15.4 million in 2020-21. The most recent fiscal year report puts the athletic department’s debt at nearly $91 million, up from $68.7 million the previous year.

While trying to get back in the black on the budget, Batt also will have to learn to fiscally manage more sports with the Spartans — 23, to Georgia Tech’s 17 — while being a “fiery athletic director that likes to win,” as he called himself Tuesday on the “MSU Today” podcast.

4. Restructure NIL

With change potentially coming nationally to college sports, getting MSU’s external donor groups on the same page will be essential. The biggest among them who have driven the direction — including Greg Williams of Acrisure, former Izzo player Mat Ishbia of United Wholesale Mortgage, Steve St. Andre of Shift Digital and those within the This is Sparta! collective — all possess financial clout individually. Reaching a higher plateau collectively will be Batt’s mission, using the current benefactors as a starting point to entice more to join, then uniting them all under a new umbrella to prepare for the next pivot when the House settlement kicks in and schools will essentially become distributors of funding.

Izzo understands the need for financing in the new world he’s adapting to, despite winning a Big Ten title while sticking to his principles. And in major college football, the market to pay the NFL-caliber players now required to compete for FBS championships is exploding. That’s just the two primary sports and not taking into account the money needed to pay players in non-revenue sports that Haller left in good position competitively.

5. Focus on future

MSU’s biggest revenue generator remains its football program, and the stadium and on-field product both need refreshing. The excitement of the Mark Dantonio era showed the Spartans still can walk among the giants in the sport, as did the one magical year with running back Kenneth Walker III under coach Mel Tucker that was the outlier of the past decade.

Then comes hard conversations about potentially cutting more sports after Beekman eliminated the men’s and women’s swimming and diving programs in 2021. It is an uncomfortable topic, particularly for a former non-revenue athlete like Batt, who was a goalie on North Carolina’s 2001 national champion men’s soccer team and said he believes in being “in the opportunity business” for student-athletes despite the trend toward professionalism.

And that barely scratches the surface of what lies ahead as Batt leaves the declining Atlantic Coast Conference to try and bring MSU back among the elite of the power-wielding Big Ten.

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

 Subscribe to the “Spartan Speak” podcast for new episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts. And catch all of our podcasts and daily voice briefing at freep.com/podcasts.

Michigan State athletic directors

• Charles Bemies: 1899-1900.
• George Denham: 1901-02.
• Chester Brewer: 1903-10, 1917, 1919-21.
• John Macklin: 1911-15.
• George Gauthier: 1916, 1918.
• Albert Barron: 1922.
• Ralph Young: 1923-54.
• Clarence “Biggie” Munn: 1954-72.
• J. Burt Smith: 1972-75.
• John D. Shingleton: 1975-76.
• Joe Kearney: 1976-80.
• Doug Weaver: 1980-90.
• George Perles: 1990-92.
• Merrily Dean Baker: 1992-95.
• Merritt Norvell: 1995-99.
• Clarence Underwood: 1999-2002.
• Ron Mason: 2002-07.
• Mark Hollis: 2007-18.
• Bill Beekman: 2018-2021.
• Alan Haller: 2021-May 1, 2025.
• J Batt: Hired June 2, 2025 (begins week of June 16).

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WVU coach Rich Rodriguez is in favor of there only being one portal period.

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez was vocal this spring about his problems with the NCAA and the current state of college football. His biggest issue was with the transfer portal, and how there were two openings, with one in the winter and the other in the spring.

Rodriguez wants to adopt a professional model, like Bill Belichick’s model, with one portal window being like free agency and recruiting being the draft.

“It kind of sucks that we have to do so much roster movement, management, whatever you want to call it in April,” Rodriguez said early this spring. “I guess I am complaining. It’s kind of a new thing in college football. It’s not smart. It’s not right. It’s not organized correctly.”

Rodriguez wants one portal period. His argument is that he’ll coach a player all spring, and then after he’s spent all his time and effort developing the player, he can just jump in the portal and play against him in the fall.

“I mean, how ridiculous is that?” Rodriguez said in March. “There’s another portal thing coming up in a couple of weeks… I wasted all my time coaching this guy, getting him ready, and then he’s getting a paycheck to go somewhere else.”

Rodriguez isn’t the only coach in college football who sees this as an issue. Last week, the Big 12 coaches, athletic directors, and commissioner Brett Yormark met to talk about the current state of the sport and voiced their complaints.

Thursday, Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham and Kansas coach Lance Leipold took to the podium, answering questions about what they’d like to see for the future of college football, representing the rest of the Big 12 coaches.

The consensus for the portal was that the Big 12 coaches agree with Rodriguez and want one portal period.

“As coaches, we unanimously support one portal window, and that is in January,” Leipold said. “That’s what we’d like.”

Currently, there’s a portal period in December and another in April, so the January window won’t be a plug-and-play option. It won’t just replace one of the current windows while getting rid of the other. But, there’s reasoning behind why the coaches want January to be when the spring portal falls.

“It’s a tough thing with calendars right now and where it goes,” Leipold said ” It’s a chance to get your team settled. You’re signing most of your guys in December. You’re going to know what your roster will be like to start the second semester, and you have the opportunity to work and develop, build those relationships, evaluate your team, and get ready for the next season.”

A January portal gets rid of the awkward conversations a player and coach have in December when he’s on the roster of a College Football Playoff team making a run for the National Championship, and in the middle, the player has to decide to whether to stay for the betterment of the team or leave to better his career.

It also removes a coach coaching a player all spring, just for them to leave at the end.

It’ll be interesting to see how January works, though. The December portal was created because the winter semester ends in early December and starts at the beginning of January. So, players have time to switch schools during the break. The portal in January could get dicey with many schools starting the second semester in early January. The National Championship game for 2026 is scheduled for January 19, which is deep into January, so will it be after? Now, it’s almost February at that point.

There hasn’t been a change, yet, on the portal because of issues like these, but it’s known that the Big 12 coaches want it to change, so a switch could be coming in the future.

“I think the people in charge see that you can’t have this much roster movement and turnover and changing in April and May,” Rodriguez said. “It’s ridiculous.”