The consensus top recruit in the 2026 high school football class has made his much-anticipated college decision. Julian “Ju Ju” Lewis, a sophomore quarterback at Carrollton (Ga.) High School, tells Sports Illustrated he has committed to attend the University of Southern California to play for coach Lincoln Riley, who has developed a trio of Heisman Trophy winners. Once Lewis enrolls, he’ll be poised to pick up the mantle of Caleb Williams, last year’s Heisman recipient and an anticipated top pick in next year’s NFL draft.
In July, the coveted 6'1", 190-pound recruit announced he’d whittled his college list down to eight schools: USC, Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, LSU, Ohio State, Florida State and Texas A&M.
Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated
Last season Lewis set Georgia state freshman passing records with 4,118 yards and 48 touchdowns. Along the way, he guided the Trojans to a 14–0 season before falling to Mill Creek in the 7A state championship game. In that 70–35 defeat, Lewis passed for 531 yards, a state title game record, and tossed five touchdowns. For those feats, he was named MaxPreps National Freshman of the Year and was the first sophomore named to the Touchdown Club of Atlanta’s preseason all-star team.
“He’s our number-one-ranked prospect right now, regardless of class,” says Billy Tucker, ESPN’s football recruiting coordinator and the director of the Under Armour All-America game. “He’s playing against the best competition in the country. He’s a passer first. He can definitely beat you with his legs: He’s fast, has a good sense of a closing pocket and when to escape and improvise. So he can really do it all and fit into a variety of offenses. … A once-in-a-decade type of kid.”
In a contest televised nationally on ESPN2 last Friday, Carrollton dropped its first game of the 2023 season to Langston Hughes, 39–34. In the loss, Lewis completed 20 of his 30 pass attempts for 186 yards and a score. Though he has already accumulated impressive accolades and selected a college, Lewis says his focus remains on building on his ’22 campaign: “I had a historic freshman season,” he says, “but I want to have historic senior, junior and sophomore seasons, too.”
Carrollton coach Joey King, who won a pair of state titles with Trevor Lawrence at Georgia’s Cartersville High School, says Lewis is already picking up his offensive scheme at a pace comparable to—or perhaps even surpassing—Lawrence, who went on to win a national championship at Clemson and was the first pick in the 2021 NFL draft.
“If you have a quarterback who can think and process the game, the next two important pieces are anticipation and accuracy—those are two things that Trevor had, and those are two things that Julian does an exceptional job of,” King says. “Anticipating, because of his understanding of the game, and then being able to put the ball where it’s supposed to be when it’s supposed to be there. He’s one of the best I’ve been around, for sure.”
