![]() ![]() He had brothers and sisters who helped keep him alive. He had friends who were as determined as he was to get out. The blind side professional#He's intelligent, he's determined, he stayed largely (if not totally) out of trouble, and - oh, right - he has a level of innate athletic ability, as well as a physical build, that has allowed him to become a professional football player.Īnd yet, when you read his story, what resonates is how many other people had to get involved in order for him to get as far as college at Ole Miss (putting aside the great fame and fortune of the NFL). (Interestingly, he says he believed from a young age that sports would be his exit strategy, though he originally thought it would be basketball.)īut think about it: Here's a guy who had a certain number of built-in tools to work with. Of course, it begins with Oher himself, and an impressive determination not to repeat his mother's life. What the story underscores as he tells it is just how many things have to happen for those odds to be overcome. Poverty, foster care, spotty school attendance, living in an unsafe environment with a frequently absent mother - there are a lot of reasons why, statistically speaking, the odds were not with young Michael. It's in the title, in fact: I Beat The Odds. Oher devotes only a couple of paragraphs to his reaction to the film, but here's part of what he has to say:īut ultimately, what's really interesting about the book isn't just the correcting of the record about his knowledge of football. He wrote it to offer advice to those who have heard the story and want to help kids who are in the foster care system.īut if I had to guess what put him over the top, and what made this naturally reticent guy decide to pull the trigger and work on a book about himself, I'd guess it was the scene in the film where Sandra Bullock, as Leigh Anne Tuohy, drags him around football practice explaining what blocking is. He wrote it to recognize some of the other people besides the Tuohys (about whom he writes with tremendous love and devotion) who were so important to the changes in his life. Oher wrote this book to explain to kids that there is more to escaping a life of great poverty and need than waiting around to be adopted by rich people. ![]() The blind side how to#Here it is: Michael Oher is really, really frosted that they made it look like Leigh Anne Tuohy had to show him how to play football. There is one place where the frustration he feels about the distortion of his story is most palpable. In fact, the book is not a list of complaints about how his life has been represented at all. To read Oher's own version of his life (ghostwritten by former Sports Illustrated associate editor Don Yaeger) is to witness a real feat of grace: he decisively reclaims control of this story without once taking anything away from his love of or his gratitude for his adoptive family - a family that's been elevated to near sainthood. let's see, how does Oher himself put it in his new book, I Beat The Odds? To viewers of the 2009 film The Blind Side, which told the story of how Oher came to live with the wealthy Tuohy family, Michael Oher might have seemed. He didn't talk much and he didn't want to rehash his past, so he just. To readers of Michael Lewis' 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution Of A Game, Michael Oher - now an offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, once a kid with a crack-addicted mother living in public housing in Memphis - likely seemed deeply enigmatic. if you listen to a station that carries the show live. Special programming note: Michael Oher is scheduled to appear tomorrow on NPR's Talk Of The Nation. ![]()
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