For once, the spotlight seemed faint. Save for a half dozen onlookers—some 126,000 fewer people than follow him on Instagram—the Carroll County Schools Performing Arts Center’s 1,100-seat auditorium sat empty as 15-year-old wunderkind quarterback Julian Lewis and a trio of his Carrollton High teammates, all clad in sport coats and slacks, fielded questions onstage from a Southern-drawled media contingent. Lewis’s brown-and-blond curls bounced, and his braces glinted as he met earnest questions about toughness and teamwork with platitudes about . . . toughness and teamwork.
The Aug. 1 regional media day event likely marked one of the final times in his young life that his words will be parsed not by a national audience, but instead by a smattering of radio listeners in this placid tract 50 miles west of Atlanta. In 17 days, Carrollton’s season opener would be broadcast on ESPN2. Four days after that, he would commit to USC. Just as he had been coveted by recruiters and coaches, he remains so by brands, desperate to associate with a teenager who could offer them hard-to-earn cachet. Julian’s anonymity was dwindling by the day.
Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated
