There’s nobody on the field taller than Baitian Li.

The 6-foot-6 17-year-old towers over his teammates, an advantage he leans on as someone learning football as he goes. He lumbers after ball carriers with his lengthy arms outstretched to get ahold of them as a defensive end on the John Carroll scout team defense. Opponents can’t miss him.

Li stands out with his height — and six million other ways.

The exchange student from China is still adjusting to life in the U.S., but he has two things helping him: the uniquely American sport of high school football and millions of social media followers.

Li and a group of teammates and friends run accounts on various platforms that have accumulated massive audiences for comedic skits and displaying what life is like in American high schools to Li’s friends back home. Through football and social media fame, he’s adjusting to this new way of life.

And John Carroll is adapting to him.

“He loves it here,” Patriots coach Mark Modeste said. “He loves every minute of it.”

Li was born and raised in Beijing, China’s capital and second-most populous city. He played football there, although he said it doesn’t match what he’s seen of youth football in the U.S. He moved to Harford County three years ago to start high school at John Carroll. He lives with a host family during school years and returns to China every summer.

Li was eager to start playing football for his new school to get a taste of what he always watched on television. It quickly became an avenue to more.

“If I wasn’t on the football team, I’d just stay home and do nothing,” Li said. “I play on the football team first and make TikToks second.”

He struggled to learn English at first and used the social media app to help. That helped him socially, but it also opened his eyes to another way to spend his free time. He gathered a group of buddies and began experimenting with different videos. Then the followers came.

Most of Li’s crew’s following is on Douyin, an app similar to TikTok but exclusively available in China — it’s banned in the rest of the world, but Li still has access to it. Douyin is also owned by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and consists of short videos users scroll through with an algorithm that learns a user’s interests similar to its counterpart. They’re on other Chinese social media apps, including its version of YouTube.

The group’s content ranges from comedic skits about football to videos that take followers through a typical day in Li’s life as a teenager at an American high school. Most of their free time during lunch hours, after school and on weekends is devoted to creative brainstorming. Li’s childhood friends can’t get enough.

His audience has grown to such a level that he’s been offered sponsorship deals to promote Chinese products and brands — clothes, candy and video games. Li estimates he’s made around $10,000 so far.

“He’s got a way bigger plan ahead,” said Andrew Tribull, a teammate and friend who’s appeared in several of Li’s videos. “He’s been building this platform and growing it into a company.”

Financial gains aside, the biggest benefit is now being felt in his everyday life.

Li feels his English has come along substantially over the last three years, although there’s still some bumps. Modeste recalls a moment during a game where he told Li to “stay outside,” to prevent a runner from getting around him and force him to the middle of the field. “But coach, we are outside,” Li confusingly responded, taking Modeste’s message literally.

They can laugh at those gaffes now. Li, who almost everyone at John Carroll calls “Sunday” — the loose English translation of his first name — now has a circle of friends who are eager to be around his infectious and outgoing personality. Once shy to branch out, people now flock to him.

“It really helped me,” Li said. “A lot of people come to see me like, ‘Hey, Sunday, can we do a TikTok?’ I’m making friends.”