LONG BEACH, Calif. — Halfway between Compton and the Pacific coast, Sammy Toa-Schuster turns onto a residential street and stops in front of a pale, yellow one-story house. There’s a blue tarp covering almost the entire roof, held in place by tires. Another tarp, anchored by sandbags, keeps rainwater from seeping under the garage door. It’s early. The first twangs of a hot summer day are streaming through the trees as Sammy steps into the Southern California sunlight and smiles.
Advertisem*nt
“Well,” she says, “this is it.”
The garage is where Sammy and her husband, Lawrence Schuster, and their seven children slept. They had bunk beds for the younger ones, but the oldest son, JuJu Smith-Schuster, curled in the corner with only a blanket between him and the concrete floor.
The yellow house once was owned by JuJu’s late grandmother, Teuila Toa, Sammy’s mom. JuJu called her “Big Mama.” She opened the door to anyone in the family trying to get back on their feet. JuJu’s parents had lost their jobs and their house. For eight years, on and off, they called this place home. “When in doubt, if you’re struggling,” JuJu says, “that was the house to go to.” At one point, at least 20 people lived there. They helped pay the mortgage. They shared a kitchen and a bathroom. And each night, they ate together. The cousins wrestled and played. Then, as darkness fell, the Schusters retreated to the garage.
“We always had each other,” JuJu says later. “I didn’t really care where we lived. As long as there was a roof over our head and food on the table, that was all that mattered.”
The Schusters moved a few years ago, before the Steelers drafted JuJu, and they now own a place in nearby Paramount. It has a backyard and a swimming pool. There’s a bedroom for the boys, and another for the girls. Five of them, ages 7 to 13, are still at home. But Sammy remembers that for the first year in the new house, they all slept in the same room. She would wake and find five children sleeping at the foot of the bed.
Sammy’s voice gets softer. “We were used to it,” she says. “The kids were scared to sleep by themselves.”
Sammy starts for the front door. The yellow house now belongs to one of her sisters. As Sammy slips inside, she motions to stay silent. There’s a family asleep in the garage.
JuJu isn’t here. He’s in Oregon for a Microsoft commercial shoot. He flew there at 6 a.m. and has a 6 p.m. flight back to Los Angeles. Sammy, his mother and manager, sips an iced coffee at Starbucks and thumbs through her calendar. The day before, they had a six-hour session with Oakley in Orange County, then drove to Los Angeles for a Pizza Hut photoshoot. (A month later, the images of JuJu and pizza boxes shined on screens above Times Square.)
Advertisem*nt
JuJu has a Tide shoot scheduled for the next day, at UCLA. Sammy already has pushed it back once, to 3 p.m. “He needs to sleep,” she says.
The business of being JuJu is — to borrow a phrase — booming. Apparently, there is an appetite for a squeaky-clean football star with a Fortnite habit. JuJu was the Steelers’ leading receiver and team MVP last season, but his breakout year was overshadowed by Antonio Brown’s hasty exit and haunted by a fumble that potentially cost Pittsburgh a playoff spot.
JuJu says he hasn’t spoken to Brown since they traded tweets and subtweets in April, the time Brown wrote, “boy fumbled the whole post season in the biggest game of year ! Everyone went blind to busy making guys famous not enough reality these days !” (More on that later.)
Now, the Steelers turn from Brown, who began as an anonymous receiver learning from Hines Ward and Mike Wallace and grew into a demigod, to JuJu. He was born John Smith. (An aunt started calling him JuJu when he was an infant, and it stuck.) By day, he’s one of the most colorful characters in the NFL. By night, he streams with Ninja and Drake. JuJu is 22, halfway through his rookie contract, and still the youngest receiver on the roster. He’s carefree, a social-media and e-sports darling, and beloved by Steelers fans. He struck cult-hero status when, as a rookie with no driver’s license, he biked to practice each day — then he went viral when the bike was stolen.
JuJu’s play made him a Pro Bowl receiver, but his personality has turned him into a celebrity. His social-media accounts are an assault of positivity, as he injects the word lit and its derivative litty into the mainstream.
Here’s how to use that in a sentence: JuJu went to the Chartiers Valley High School prom in May, and afterward he tweeted, “[H]ad a litty night at this school!” This was the same month that JuJu staged a water-balloon fight and dodgeball tournament, free of charge. He paid the winners with rolls of cash he pulled from his fanny pack.
JuJu already has several marketing deals, including one with Pizza Hut. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
“Of course, if he kills it, we’re going to be three times as busy (next year),” Sammy says. “But if we don’t, we just have to keep him busy. That’s the goal. I told him, ‘I want my son so busy that he doesn’t even think about doing anything crazy.’ We’ve done a good job. The only crazy thing he’s doing is his video games.”
Advertisem*nt
JuJu already is ranked as the seventh-most-marketable player in the NFL by Sports Business Daily. (Brown is 14th.) The subtext there is that, should JuJu step into the space Brown vacated and succeed, superstardom awaits. He stands on the precipice.
This may come as a shock, given how outrageously Generation Z JuJu seems today, but he used to hate social media. He saw his mother post photos of her coffee on MySpace. “That’s so stupid,” he would say. He saw his friends spending half their time on their phones, then getting into fights over tweets and Facebook posts. So he decided he wouldn’t touch it.
“I just felt like it was a way to destroy your reputation so quick,” JuJu says. “I thought of it in a negative way, like this will never work because people will always use it badly. And I saw it being used badly.”
JuJu was 18 when a friend at USC explained that he could make a lot of money by using social media to build his brand. So JuJu started an Instagram page, the one that now has 2.8 million followers. “From there,” he says, “it exploded.” JuJu is hurtling toward 1 million followers on Twitter, and earlier this month, his YouTube channel surpassed 800,000 subscribers.
You also may be surprised to hear that JuJu — maybe the most popular pro athlete on Twitch — didn’t have a gaming console until he was 12. He had asked his parents for a PlayStation 3, but they couldn’t afford it. So he brought his wish to his grandmother, who had a sewing shop in Long Beach. She told JuJu he could earn the PlayStation. “Whatever you want me to do, Big Mama,” he said. They struck a deal. For every touchdown JuJu scored for his youth football team, the Garden Grove Falcons, he’d get $20. He needed $250.
It took him two games. JuJu raced into his grandmother’s shop.
“I did it, Big Mama!” he said. “I did it!”
Advertisem*nt
A passion was born. The night before JuJu’s early morning flight to Oregon, Sammy instructed him to sleep. She called an hour later to check on him. He was playing Fortnite with friends. “Dude, you’re not tired?!” she asked. JuJu shrugged and resumed. There are worse ways to decompress.
Juju Smith-Schuster, seen here playing “Call of Duty: Black Ops 4,” plays video games to help unwind. (Robert Hanashiro / USA Today)
“Whatever works for you,” Sammy says, “as long as it’s not alcohol or drugs.”
JuJu laughs at that. “It’s to get away from reality,” he says later. “Football is football, and that’s awesome. But my way of yoga or meditation is playing video games.”
The Jackrabbits are flying. The sun has started its slow descent, but practice on the turf field behind Long Beach Polytechnic High School is picking up pace. It’s a clear day. Beyond the east end zone, the Santa Ana Mountains are silhouetted in the distance. This is the home of one of the premier high school programs in the country. And it’s where JuJu’s football career fully took flight.
Two men in white T-shirts watch practice from a bench beside the field. Their sons play for Poly. When someone mentions JuJu, one man breaks into a smile. He says his boy just saw JuJu at the skate park. You never know where you’ll find JuJu when he’s home in Long Beach. Some days he’s spotted at a movie theater or an ice cream stand with a carload of his siblings in tow.
“He’s still the same JuJu,” says Raul Lara, the former head coach at Poly. “Clown. Messes around. But he’ll do anything for you.”
Today, JuJu’s Steelers jersey is one of six displayed in a glass case inside the school’s main entrance. Expectations were high even before he enrolled at Poly. (That tends to happen when Snoop Dogg nicknames you “SportsCenter” in the eighth grade.)
Tai Tiedemann was a quarterback at Lakewood High School when, during a game against Poly, JuJu returned a kickoff for a touchdown. “That dude is a sophom*ore,” a teammate told Tiedemann. “He’s supposed to be the next big thing.” The next year, Tiedemann transferred to Poly. The two of them clicked, spending their weekends playing Madden at Tiedemann’s house or riding roller coasters at Six Flags, and JuJu blossomed into a five-star recruit.
Advertisem*nt
“It’s still really surreal to see,” Tiedemann, now a minor-league pitcher in the Texas Rangers organization, says of JuJu’s rise. “When I talk about JuJu, I say it in a manner of, that’s a guy I grew up with, not like I’m talking about a star. If I name-drop him, people are like, ‘No way!’”
JuJu is one of many Long Beach Polytechnic High School alumni to play in the NFL. They are honored in several parts of the school. (Stephen J. Nesbitt / The Athletic)
The night before National Signing Day, JuJu went with Sammy and Lawrence, his stepfather, to In-N-Out Burger. JuJu looked across the table at his parents. They were quiet. Sammy had met Lawrence when JuJu was 4 and his sister 6. Their biological father left when JuJu was a toddler and has had minimal contact with him since. It was Lawrence who taught JuJu football and rugby. JuJu took a deep breath and said, “I decided I’m going to Oregon.”
“It took everything in me to not break down in front of him. I grabbed Lawrence’s hand under the table and squeezed it,” Sammy says. “I went home and started crying. The next day, I woke up in tears. I’m like, ‘He’s going to be gone. He’s leaving me.’”
JuJu was joking. But he sold it. When the cameras went live, he faked toward the Oregon cap, then reached for the USC one instead. He was staying home.
But staying home is not the same as staying at home. When you grow up in a garage, a college dormitory feels foreign. It was too quiet. JuJu couldn’t sleep. He missed the noise. He missed his family. He missed the buffets they had every night at the yellow house. So JuJu phoned his mother, and the homesick son asked for a ride. He spent his first weekend of college back in Long Beach, back in the noise.
Living in a dormitory “was so weird, man,” JuJu says. “I had my own bed, my own room — well, I shared a room, which was fine. But to have my own bed was unbelievable. We weren’t all jammed into one room.”
In time, JuJu adjusted. He grew into the big kid on campus. His personality shined. He had a Minions bag and an Elmo backpack. He zipped around on a one-wheeled hoverboard and led late-night runs to Taco Bell. “He works hard,” says Max Browne, a former USC quarterback, “but at the same time I don’t think he takes anything crazy seriously — in a good way.”
Advertisem*nt
“I always get that question,” Sammy says. “Is he really like that? Yeah, he is.”
At USC, like with the Steelers, JuJu waited his turn. He played second fiddle to Nelson Agholor as a freshman, and he worked. Chris Flores, who has worked with several USC athletes and runs STARS, a training center in Southern California, would meet JuJu at 6 a.m. outside his dormitory to run sprints before class. Then, on days without practice, Flores would drive JuJu to and from Long Beach to train for another hour or two. Some days, Flores says, their workouts devolved into dance competitions. And then they’d head back to campus.
“Bro, that guy can fall asleep faster than any guy I’ve ever met,” Flores says, laughing. “The first time I thought he was messing with me. He got in the car, and he was snoring. I was like, no way. Sure enough, he was knocked out. But then he wakes up, and he’s right back to being JuJu.”
When JuJu turned 18, he changed his last name to Smith-Schuster to honor his stepfather. The next time JuJu scored a touchdown, the public-address announcer at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum pronounced his name “JuJu Smith-Shooter,” but soon it was a household name. Teammates started calling him “Superman” as a sophom*ore after he beat Cal with a broken hand, had surgery two days later and didn’t miss a game. He had eight catches for 138 yards and a touchdown the next Saturday, against Arizona.
From time to time, Keary Colbert, the USC wide receivers coach, will come across this 30-second clip from the Cal game his junior year. In the clip, JuJu is dancing to “JuJu On That Beat” during a break in the action, and the crowd is going bananas. In the front row of the student section, painted chests spell out O-N-T-H-A-T-B-E-A-T. It is the JuJu Experience distilled.
Juju On That Beat In Game 😂😂 Shoutout to the Student Section for hyping me up! 🔥🙌🏾 pic.twitter.com/ggRZSw7cBq
— JuJu Smith-Schuster (@TeamJuJu) October 28, 2016
But what strikes Colbert about the scene isn’t the dancing or the joy, but where JuJu is standing. He’s on the front line of the kickoff return team, an All-Pac-12 receiver doing the dirty work of blocking on special teams. JuJu did everything for that team, Colbert says. After a 1-3 start, the Trojans won out and defeated Penn State in the Rose Bowl, JuJu’s last college game.
“Every time he’s out there,” Colbert says, “it’s like he’s playing in the Super Bowl.”
It’s late August now, and there are two paintings in the lobby of the Steelers practice facility. The artist, Cody Sabol, lingers nearby. The first piece was commissioned for Ramon Foster, and the second was for fun. It’s JuJu. And it’s bright. Graffiti font screams LIT and HUSTLE and GOOD JUJU. There’s JuJu’s number, 19, and the Fortnite llama, and a halo around JuJu’s head.
“I wanted to do JuJu because right now he’s the face of Pittsburgh sports, him and Sidney Crosby,” Sabol explains as he waits for JuJu to pass by and see the painting. “I think this form really captured a little bit of the personality that he has — fun and colorful.”
Advertisem*nt
Sabol spent 25 hours on the painting.
“(The halo) was the last piece,” Sabol says. “It pulled it all together.”
Last year, Sabol created a piece for Antonio Brown. It showed Brown flexing against a black sky. Intended or not, it’s a study in contrasts.
After Brown criticized him on Twitter in April, JuJu snapped back. He tweeted, “All I ever did was show that man love and respect from the moment I got to the league. I was genuinely happy for him too when he got traded to Oakland w/ a big contract, and now he takes shots at me on social media?” And then, “Crazy how big that ego got to be to take shots at people who show you love!”
Brown’s next move was a misfire. He posted a screenshot of an Instagram direct message JuJu had sent him in November 2015, when JuJu was 18 and new to social media: What’s up AB? I’m a receiver at the University of Southern California. I appreciate all your work. You’re a great man on and off the field. Do you have any tips that can help take my game to the next level? Thanks man. (Brown deleted it the next day.)
Went from over a year ago asking @Ab84 for some tips on IG to working with him on the field as a WR for the @Steelers. God is good 🙏🏾 #IGWT pic.twitter.com/M8gAEnFPlJ
— JuJu Smith-Schuster (@TeamJuJu) May 21, 2017
Sitting beside the Steelers practice fields, JuJu glances at the JUGS machine. He is looking for the positives. When he was a rookie, at the end of every practice he and Brown would be the last players on the field, catching football flying from that machine. “I learned a lot about just working hard (from him),” JuJu says. “You see how hard he works day in and day out in practice.”
He goes on, addressing the fallout.
“I’m surely kind of bummed the way it ended,” JuJu says. “I felt like if we were ever in the same room, I wish we could build that relationship back up again and have that bond. I don’t hate him at all whatsoever. I wish I could be able to still have that connection and bond and still talk to him.
Advertisem*nt
“But obviously he looks at it a different way. It is what it is.”
JuJu knows he constantly will be compared with Brown. His production. His antics. It isn’t easy filling the footsteps of a future Hall of Famer. JuJu will attract more attention from defenses. He spent the offseason training for it. There were flights and photoshoots, so sometimes it meant flipping on the lights at Downey High School’s football field for a late-night session with Flores. JuJu shed a few pounds and got ready to run. “We might get one shot at a deep ball. If we’re not ready to run, that’s on us,” Flores told him. “You’re never going to be a 4.3 guy. But you can run 4.5 flat the entire time you touch the ball.”
JuJu’s first test in a post-Brown world was on the first day of Steelers training camp. Brown had always made headlines with his extravagant entrances, whether by chauffeured Rolls-Royce or by helicopter. At his first training camp with the Raiders, Brown dropped in by hot air balloon.
There were whispers that JuJu, the new No. 1, would show up in a Santa suit. It was July 25, after all, five months to Christmas. The day before, he had posted an Instagram poll asking whether he should sky-dive into camp. But the 4 p.m. report deadline came and went, and Santa never showed. JuJu had parked in the players’ lot and slipped silently past the crowd.
“I’ll whup his ass.”
Sammy says she’s not worried fame will change her son. If it does, he’ll have to answer to her. “If you (say) now you’re famous, now you can’t hang out with this person, and now that you have money you can’t do the things you used to do.” Sammy wags a finger in the air. “Seriously.”
Sammy Toa-Schuster, JuJu’s mom, stands in front of the garage where she, her husband and their seven kids slept for eight years. (Stephen J. Nesbitt / The Athletic)
JuJu may be a celebrity, but he’s still a son, a big brother and, as of July, an uncle. He was once a five-star recruit changing diapers in the garage of his grandmother’s house. Now he’s a Pro Bowler, babysitting pro bono. This spring, Sammy and Lawrence went out of town for a night, and JuJu watched his five younger siblings.
Advertisem*nt
“Basically,” JuJu says, “a big kid babysitting little kids.”
He ran into trouble. The kids refused to shower. JuJu cooked chicken and rice for dinner, but they wouldn’t eat. JuJu put the food away, and, around 11 p.m., the kids told him they were hungry. JuJu phoned his mother. “I don’t know how you do it, Mom,” he said. “I don’t know.”
The Schusters still live in a full house, but a newer one. One of Sammy’s sisters lives with Sammy and Lawrence. The garage is where they keep JuJu’s memorabilia. Sammy stays busy with JuJu’s business affairs, and Lawrence works full-time in the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s hazardous-materials division. He has no plans to retire. Still, considering the sacrifices JuJu’s parents made to keep a roof over his head, he enjoys helping out where he can.
“It’s been amazing, man,” JuJu says. “Being able to get my dad or mom a car. Being able to help pay rent — something they’ve been doing since I was a kid, and fortunately now I have an opportunity to do the same. It’s just a blessing that I’m able to give back to them. They have five other kids at home. They have to take care of them. I don’t want them to ever stress about that.”
A few months ago, JuJu went by the yellow house. It looks the same as when he lived there, he says, though the flowering plumeria trees in front of the garage have grown. JuJu parked out front, and he had this thought: Maybe one day I’ll buy this place. There’s already another home he’s helping his family fix up, he says, but this one is special.
(Top photo: Aaron Doster / USA Today)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kGpva2xlbnxzfJByZmlxX2WCcLbUo6xmq52ewal50pyfrqukmr9uv9OenKWdoqh6orrTqKWip12Xv7DDzWarq5mUmnqnu9GtpaKslWQ%3D
