The Josh Innes Show - NIL Continues To Get Worse

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

JuJu Lewis may end up being the starting QB for the Colorado Buffaloes this season. He is 17. He's never played a down of college football. He already has a brand. His own merchandise. He's also part owner of a company that aims to "democratize" NIL deals for college athletes. He owns part of a company that asks fans to donate money to help lure projects to their favorite schools. This whole thing is gross to me. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I think it's bad for the game and I think we're creating bad human beings or at least misguided or at least humans that don't really understand how the real world works and when a lot of these humans, the majority of them who will never play professional sports, when those people get in the real world you're just sending out probably a bunch of entitled people who have no concept of how the real world works and are probably going to be broke and are probably going to be in a bad place. Many of them will because you're not teaching people how to be adults. Like you can't teach someone how to be an adult and you can't teach people about authority and you can't teach people about just life in general

when from the time they're 16, 17, 15 you're throwing as much money as possible at them as you can and you're trying to build giant brands around these people that have never done anything in their lives. They've known no struggle at this point. Like I just think we're sending out a bad breed of person is what we're doing. We're creating these people that I don't think are going to be equipped to handle the real world 10 years from now. Now some of them are going to go play pro and they'll be billionaires and it won't matter. But many of them won't. And I and that now again, this is a tale as old as time. This

is nothing new, but it's becoming more and more prevalent now, because we're just letting guys leave and go to five different schools where it's just not a good situation that we're building here and I think we're building a more mentally immature person that's going to be going out in the real world at some point. Let's talk about this because there's a story involving Deion Sanders and his new quarterback I guess Neuschadder And we'll talk about that after these words. The NBA Finals are finally here and after spending the playoffs all over the Pick6 app from DraftKings, well, we're ready for the championship round and this is your last shot to win some real

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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 coach Deion Sanders as a top recruit out of Carrollton, Georgia, Lewis, who 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 football players. 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 quarterback 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 Fansteak where fans can pay to lure recruits to their favorite college teams by contributing to their NIL deals. That's my number one problem. Like I might say that number one, my biggest issue I

kind of run into with college football and college athletics is that these schools are taking people who are already spending money on tickets and seat licenses and merchandise and asking them to give more money. And it's not just the big corporations either. It's one thing if you've got the big multi-billion dollar corporation in the state that wants to give a couple million dollars a year to NIL because the guy that runs the company is an alumni and he wants them to go out and get the great

star quarterback. What they're doing is they're taking people and they're asking average everyday Joes to give $50 a month, $25 a month to help get the star players to their school. And on one hand, like, okay, you spend 15 bucks for Netflix, 20 for Prime, whatever, maybe just don't get those anymore and you can donate to your school and maybe it doesn't bother you. It's very possible. The idea of major universities with athletic departments that have millions upon millions of dollars going in and out with big money boosters lining the coffers of these NILs. When you've got these people asking you for more money when you're already

giving money to them, like to me I'd ask, okay, so why should I spend X amount of dollars on tickets all the time and buy a seat license? Because a lot of these schools have season ticket waiting lists and once you get there, you don't just buy tickets, you buy a seat license. So why should I buy this and t-shirts and merch? And why should I buy the season tickets and the PSLs? And why should I go on the road trips to see these teams? And then on top of that, you need my $50 a month to help pay,

guys. Like, you know what, college athletics, find the fucking money and pay them yourself. These athletic departments, particularly football programs, have millions of dollars. And we're sitting here like, hey, by the way, we need Joe and his wife, Suzie, to give us $50 a month so we can help pay the left tackle. While it doesn't offend me, it just it feels gross to me because

you're the, by the way, I'm not going to get anything for that. You know what? I'm going to get out of it if I give you $50 a month. Maybe you go out and you get a great quarterback and he's there for a year and then the motherfucker transfers and we have to do it again. What do I really get? The athletic department is going to continue to make millions of dollars. The athletes are going to continue to get paid and make tons of cash. What am I going to get

out of that? I'm just going to continue to lie in your pockets. Now, the argument could be, well, Josh, that's already the case with the NFL when you buy tickets and pro sports. It's not like you're getting truly anything in return. No, but I'm buying a ticket to a game and I'm watching the game and if I feel like you're not doing enough to make the program or the team better and you lose, I will stop going to the games. In college, they want me to do all of this. They want me to give you $50

for a month or $25 a month to help pay some offensive lineman that's not going to stay for four years. They then want me to buy the seat license. They then want me to buy the tickets. They then want me to buy the merchandise. They then want me to go to the website and have like an all-inclusive type of media rights package that I can listen to and watch. Why do you need my cash? You've already gotten a ton of my cash. This isn't some Little League shit. This is billions of dollars we're talking about here.

By the end of June, Lewis said he plans to announce at least three other equity deals besides fan stake and will have four other active NIL deals before the season. Beyond that, Lewis hopes to win the battle to replace Shador Sanders as Colorado's next starting quarterback and use fan stake as a tool to lure top recruits to Colorado. Like that's great. Like after all that, he also hopes to be the starting quarterback for Colorado, but if he's not, at least he's got four other businesses. And I'm not here to criticize dudes for having other businesses or having a stake in

all of this shit. Like it's nice to be business savvy and business smart. Dude's 17 years old and I admire it to a degree but I also look at it like this isn't the fucking real world dude. You're not in the real world. You've never played it down in college. How many of these guys that are these highly sought after high school prospects go and just flame out? I'm sure there's a large number of them that do, but this guy's over here like, yeah, I got like four businesses and I'm, you know, working on, you know, this, you know, these deals to help fans pay to lure recruits to their favorite college teams by contributing to their NIL deals. The goal is to seize all these opportunities in Boulder where the spotlight will include at least four Colorado games on ESPN or Fox in the first month of the season, but with no guarantee that Lewis will play in any of them.

After Lewis signed with Colorado December 4th, Liberty transfer quarterback Caden Salter committed to Colorado two weeks later with one season of college eligibility remaining. Did Lewis know when he committed to Colorado that the Buffaloes would bring in another quarterback 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. So I mean who knows if he even answered. Like that's the beauty about an email. Like I'm not gonna rip this kid, but do I believe that a 17-year-old kid is the one that's responsible for doing an email?

Like, that's the other problem I have. Like, get on the fucking phone with somebody and do an interview. You know who's probably giving the answers to all these email questions? Some little handler of his that's writing these. There's no way this 17-year-old kid is sitting in here. And there's probably also no way this kid year old kid is sitting in here. There's

probably also no way this kid is running these businesses at 17 years of age. What we're going to end up finding out about all these types of deals is you're going to get these guys that are allegedly in these straight up type of situations and someone's funneling money from somewhere off the top. Someone's getting rich behind closed or it's like something is going to like, you know how some things are just fishy? Remember when our, speaking of Lenny Dykstra from yesterday, remember yesterday, we're talking about Lenny, and there was a time where Lenny was on episodes of

Real Sports, and they were talking about how Lenny Dykstra had this chain of car washes. And then he's super successful and has private planes and all this shit. And you're looking at Lenny Dykstra and you're like, something about this isn't right. The bottom is going to drop out of this at some point. There is something fishy. And then it turns out it was super fishy and my man goes to jail. When I hear this and I'm hearing that 17-year-old kid has all these business ventures and he's building a brand and then he's running like a site so you could donate money to NILs. Somebody that's higher above this kid is going to be making money off of this. Some sort of skimming.

Nothing about this feels kosher. Nothing about this feels above board. But that's the wild west of current college athletics. It used to be a simpler time where you'd recruit a guy you give his mom a house he'd get a car whatever and everybody knew it was happening but no one really gave a shit. Now they're trying to treat it like a real business but also not treat it like a real business. I just I find that hard to believe like I like you're not going to convince me that 17 year old kid who is the front of all these businesses that are going to involve transactions and pour dipshits in nowhere Colorado sending money to this collective or

what like I don't believe it. I find it hard to believe it feels scam ish and and then on top of that they agree to do an interview via email. Now I don't know if maybe like, no, there's like an email interview for something like this feels fishy too. So I'm supposed to believe that 17 year old kid is the guy running a business, but 17 year old kid can't get on the phone and do a phone interview with you can't zoom and do an interview with you. 17 year old kid has to email you answers. You want to know why 17 year old kid was emailing you answers because 17 year old kid didn't provide the answers. Whoever is above the 17 year old

kid provided the answers. All of this is fishy. All of it feels like bullshit. All of it feels slimy. I don't like it. I'm not against dudes making money. Make all the money you can. I get the argument that people make when they say, this is a small window and these guys got to cash in while they can. That's true. But people speak too like,, in too many absolutes, like one side or the other. There's either, oh, this is horrible, or well, these guys got to get it while they can. Just like most things, there's a middle ground. And the middle ground shouldn't just be, well, these guys should be able to transfer 13 times because this is the only chance they're going to have to make money in their lives. Basically, what we've taught a bunch of youth of this era is

there's no commitment to anywhere. You can bounce from place to place if you don't like the situation. Letters of intent don't matter. Contracts don't matter. Nothing you do really matters. The only thing that matters is making money in this instance. And I'm all for making money.

I don't have as much of it as I used to. I'd love to have more of it. However, where it starts feeling gross to me, like whatever, like I like watching college athletics. I like it more than pro sports most of the time, particularly football. Although I've been watching college baseball lately because of LSU and I've sort of enjoyed it. But anyway, but what we're dealing with here is you've got

17 year old kid may not have hair on his fucking chest at this point. 17 year old kid has never played it down may never play it down at Colorado and he's out here running businesses allegedly running businesses for people to make donations for money that's going to go to NiL. Like again, if it smells fishy, it's probably fishy. I don't think you can listen to that. And then on top of it, and he did an interview via email. Nothing about that feels above board. Like I the

fuck I'd be sending money to these sites. Like if I, hey, I'm a fan, I'm gonna send some money to whatever the fuck this site is called. The fuck I am. You know what my contribution to the program is? I bought tickets. My contribution is I'm buying merch. The contribution is I watch your games. The contribution is I buy overpriced shit at the stadium when I go. I'm not giving you $25 a month so you can go out and get the fucking quarterback. And of course, you'll come back at me and you go, well, then you just don't want to win. How about you rich motherfuckers when you got coaches making $10 million a

year when you got the quarterback like the kid that went to Michigan getting paid 12 million or whatever it is. How about you take some of your money out of there and pay for other fucking people and stop putting your hand out to me. I don't know you shit. And if you're LSU start winning your first fucking game of the year, that'd be a start. Hey, you win your first game of the year LSU, I'll put $25 into the collective. How about that? I'll put it in the kitty. All right, more to come.