The Blind Side

In 1978, 23-year-old Tom Lemming decided to travel around the U.S. to rate the nation’s top high school football players. At a time before video, he had to visit facilities in person and request permission to watch 16mm player film. While there, he interviewed players and published his rankings in a book. As “the only national football scout in America,” he developed “a frantic following in college football,” eventually becoming the “leading independent authority on the subject of U.S. high school football players” (27-28). These players had market value in lucrative Division I football programs, many of which subscribed to Lemming’s list and sought out his players. Parents, coaches, and players sent Lemming tapes for evaluation, hoping he would “make them famous” (28).

Though he occasionally made mistakes, Lemming was generally accurate. From a pool of three million players, he interviewed 1,500. Of these, 400 went into his book. He whittled the pool further to his Top 100, then his 25 “All Americans” (29). He became the leading authority for ESPN and USA Today. Lemming also selected the players for the U.S. Army High School All-American game, beginning in 2000.

Initially, Lemming assumed he would be identifying future college football stars. The college and professional games differed and therefore their player needs did as well. That changed, however, as top college football programs began to function as NFL training schools. Colleges sought to attract players by offering “the smoothest path to the NFL” (30). By the mid-1990s, Lemming realized that identifying the best college prospects meant identifying future NFL players: “What the NFL prized, America’s high schools supplied, and America’s colleges processed” (30). And what the NFL wanted was a left tackle who could stop a Lawrence Taylor. Must-haves included weight over 300 pounds, height over 6’5”, triangular shape, long arms, giant hands, speed, and quick, nimble feet—in their words, a “freak of nature” (31). These rare left tackles eventually earned far more than their counterparts on the other side of the offensive line.

It was this rare and expensive combination that Lemming was looking for when he sought out Michael Oher in March 2004. Lemming received a “grainy video tape” of Michael playing for a Memphis, TN evangelical high school, Briarcrest Christian School, that had few to no black players and no history of sending players to top college football programs. Lemming could find no one who had heard of Michael, and Michael did not come up in Google searches. Nonetheless, Lemming saw talent in Michael similar to that of Orlando Pace, a left tackle who received the largest rookie contract in NFL history.

Lemming could not understand how Michael could be so under the radar, given his talent. When Lemming finally met him, Michael sat silently and disinterestedly through his interview. Lemming could not get a sense of him as a person so cast him aside as a possible character risk. Only the best and most dignified high school players received invitations to play in the U.S. Army game, and Lemming was wary of kids who displayed signs they would not make it to, “much less through,” college (34).