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This Issue 05/28/2001

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• Head of the Class

Chris and Luke are not hulking figures. They neither look like football players nor have an athletic scholarship for college. That's why I'm confused when they answer my first question. Chris starts:

"Ever since we met in middle school, we've wanted to get big."

"Oh," I say, impressed, "so you lift, you lift weights."

"No, no," Chris, 5'4", says, "like famous big stars."

"Or our first fame anyway," Luke adds.

This is how the questions seem to go today; there are follow-ups, there are clarifications, I need things repeated back to me. The two high-schoolers sitting across from me do not play football or lacrosse or lift weights or get straight A's in all the APs but they have been on The Today Show and Good Morning America and all the local television stations, because they are getting full rides to college. They have not filled out the circles and numbered slots on a financial aid form. No, they e-mail rock stars and Mandy Moore. They hang out in media green rooms.

Next September they will become the first ever corporate-sponsored college students in American history.

And now, in a media-relations firm in a white colonial brick house in a white upper-middle-class Jersey suburb called Haddonfield, I'm wondering just how they're doing this--how their parents won't be paying for college--how they're doing this without selling their soul. Because sometimes their sentences end with "whatever the company wants."

Welcome to Chris' and Luke's world, where Mrs. Barth's physics class, Aerosmith and anticipation of the upcoming prom are juggled with negotiations, publicists, lawyers and media appearances. Two weeks ago they finalized a sponsor. "The Pepsi of the banking world," Chris says with a big grin. "There you go," says Luke. Because of contract stipulations, they are not allowed to disclose who the company is. It will be announced in May after they decide on where to go to college.

For these two business wizards--both brown-haired, one short and one lanky, both playing a cool that borders on overconfidence--finance, not football, is the choice sport. Though no coaches or schools actively sought them out for their idea, 15 companies had interest. Some companies, like one for caffeinated mints and the other for an adult job search-source, were inappropriate.