Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
This is gross.
One of the most stunning and disgusting sports stories this summer was Michael Oher finding out he wasn’t actually adopted by the Tuohy family, a central theme of the hit book and movie The Blind Side. The deception went a step further, with Oher taking the family to court and revealing he was put under a conservatorship he signed without fully understanding it as an 18-year-old, which allowed the family to make millions in royalties off the movie — while Oher made nothing.
Ultimately a judge sided with Oher, ending the Tuohys conservatorship — but there remain outstanding financial issues that have yet to be settled in court. Now Michael Lewis, the author of The Blind Side is blaming violence in the NFL for ‘changing’ Oher.
“What we’re watching is a change of behaviour,” he told me. “This is what happens to football players who get hit in the head: they run into problems with violence and aggression.”
In Lewis’ view it’s not about making an 18-year-old sign legal documents and making him think you adopted him. It’s that darn NFL and its big hits that are responsible for marginalizing innocent upper class white folks who got caught exploiting a football player who was living below the poverty line.
To be blunt: Michael Lewis doesn’t know shit. This is a pathetic attempt to defend the Tuohys, which he’s had a vested interest in since Oher made his claims. Lewis is close personal friends with Sean Tuohy, grew up with him, and they had a relationship prior to The Blind Side. Making matters even messier is that one of Sean and Lee Ann Tuohy’s daughters was married to a financier of the film.
Now Lewis is on the attack, choosing to re-write history and suggest that Oher was a mediocre player.
“he insisted that Oher wouldn’t have made it to the NFL without the Tuohys’ support, and that Oher did not, in fact, know much about playing football when the Tuohys first met him. On a football field, “he was not useful”, Lewis said.”
This is absolutely asinine and not grounded in history. Lewis claims that Oher not being good at football was something Hugh Freeze told him, but it was Freeze who was so desperate to get Oher onto the Briarcrest football team when he was coach there that he personally appealed to the headmaster to allow Oher to come to the school.
Not only did Oher excel on the football field in high school, but he also lettered in track and averaged 22 points and 10 rebounds on the basketball team. To try and go back now and paint Oher as “useless” until he was saved by the Tuohys is gross. He played football at public school. Oher clearly knew the game. He was a coveted athlete a private school wanted and now there’s revisionist history by Lewis to maintain the white savior complex the film gave to the Tuohys.
This whole mess is just gross. Deep down Lewis knows he’s beholden to the Tuohys, not Michael Oher — and he’s just helping his old friend out at the expense of his book’s subject.
