The Blind Side

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11–12

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: “Crossing the Line”

Big Tony grew up in one of East Memphis’s most notorious housing projects, Hurt Village. In 1973, his mother became a Born Again Christian and changed their lives for the better. To fulfill her dying wish that Big Tony’s son, Steven, have a Christian education, in the summer of 2002, Big Tony takes Steven to Briarcrest Christian School. Briarcrestis an almost all-white evangelical school on the “white” side of Memphis, home of “the nation’s largest private school system,” created in 1973 by white residents angry about school desegregation (38). Michael happened to be staying with Big Tony at the time, so Big Tony takes Michael with him to Briarcrest as well.

Senior coach Hugh Freeze speaks with Big Tony about the school’s financial and academic requirements. Steven is a solid student and athlete, but Michael’s transcripts are troubling—nine schools in eleven years, poor attendance, and a recorded IQ of 80. The school system passed Michael from grade to grade because “it was too much trouble to flunk” him (43). Still, Michael’s size impresses Freeze, so he pitches him to Briarcrest president Tim Hilen, who pressures principal Steve Simpson to admit Michael to Briarcrest. Simpson knew Michael was not qualified to attend Briarcrest but wanted to let him down easy. He tells Michael if he passes one semester in a home-study program, he can enroll at Briarcrest. Six weeks into the school year, Big Tony tells Simpson that Michael is struggling, but it is by that point too late to enroll in public school. Feeling guilty for having given Michael false hope, Simpson feels he has no choice but to accept him.

Simpson turns Michael over to Jennifer Graves, who runs Briarcrest’s special-needs program. Michael has no known learning disabilities, but he is unresponsive in and failing all his classes. Finally, his biology teacher, Marilyn Beasley, decides to test him orally and discovers he has retained much of the course content. Hoping to pass and be permitted to play basketball in the spring, Michael begins observing basketball practices, where Sean Tuohy first meets him.

Sean “was an American success story” (50). He grew up poor, became a star college basketball player, and achieved financial success via ownership of a number of fast-food franchises. His children, 15-year-old daughter Collins and nine-year-old son Sean Junior, attended Briarcrest, and Sean served as the unofficial “Life Guidance Counselor” for the school’s black athletes, many of whom ran track with his daughter, Collins (51). Sean had been the poor kid in private school who did not have money for lunch and thought “of sports as a meal ticket” (51). A basketball scholarship gained him entry into the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), but his coach was tough on him. Sean felt vulnerable to his coach’s whims, knowing he could only afford college as long as he retained his scholarship.

Sean notices Michael wearing the same clothes every day and, betting he is hungry, asks if Michael needs money for lunch. Michael says no. Sean opens a standing lunch account for him anyway, as he has done for other students in a similar position. Sean also donates to a tuition fund providing scholarships for students who can’t afford it. During Thanksgiving break, Sean and his wife, Leigh Anne, see Michael getting off a bus and heading for campus. He tells them he’s gone to the school because the building is heated. Moved to help him, Leigh Anne pick him up from practice the following day to take him clothes shopping. Leigh Anne, a member of Briarcrest’s first graduating class, grew up in a racist household, but her relationship with Sean changed her views. As an adult, she came to believe money should be used philanthropically. She insists on taking Michael to his own neighborhood to shop, telling him she trusts him to take care of her. Michael tells her, “I got your back” (59). Leigh Anne is struck by how “soft and gentle and sweet-natured” Michael is (60). Hoping to get more clothes for him, Leigh Anne, an interior designer, asks one of her clients, an NFL player, for hand-me-downs from his teammates, but when she gave the NFL player Michael’s measurements, the player tells her there’s no one on his team as big as Michael.

Chapter 4 Summary: “The Blank Slate”

By spring, Michael is earning straight Ds and permitted to play basketball. Briarcrest’s coaches quickly realize that Michael is an athlete like no other. He can run with a 50-pound tackling dummy, throw footballs 70-75 yards (60 was considered a good range for a college quarterback), and dribble, spin, and sink three-point basketball shots. Too heavy for the campus scale, Michael is taken off campus to be weighed and it’s discovered he’s 344 pounds. Track Coach Boggess also believes him to be a good discus candidate, given his throwing range, but worries the technique will be too complicated. It is not. With no formal training, Michael learns quickly by observing other athletes and breaks the West Tennessee sectional record for discus. In his junior year, Michael joins the football team.

As with academics, Michael, as a football player, is a “blank slate,” with no team experience (64). Coach Freeze initially plays him at defensive tackle because of his speed, but Michael lacks a defender’s aggressiveness. Freeze assumes having “a miserable childhood in the worst part of Memphis” would make Michael “angry” and “aggressive,” but Michael is not (64). In his fourth game, Michael catches his hand in an opposing player’s face mask and cuts “the webbing between his fingers” (65). Screaming in pain, he refuses to let anyone near his hand until Leigh Anne comes down from the stands and speaks with him. His hand is cut to the bone. Leigh Anne tells the hospital to put her husband Sean’s name on the forms, as legal guardian, since Michael is a minor.

Michael takes his first trip out of Memphis to play two basketball games in Myrtle Beach. Though physically gifted, Michael does not always accept his role on the team or play the position coaches ask him to play. As a result, they only play him half the game. In Myrtle Beach, the crowd “called him names that neither he nor his coach cared to repeat” (69). The overt racism shocks the coach, John Harrington, who demands the referees get the fans under control. Harrington theorizes that it’s this moment when Michael realizes the coaches are on his side. He stays in the whole game, and Briarcrest thrashes the other team.

Returning from the trip, Michael is stranded at the airport. Harrington offers to drive him home, and Michael asks Harrington to leave him at a dark, seemingly-empty building, information Harrington passes on to the Tuohys. It’s learned that Michael has been bouncing between as many as seven different homes. After she sees where he is sleeping, Leigh Anne tells Michael to get his things: he is moving in with the Tuohys. Leigh Anne notices Michael did not like being called “Big Mike,” and he becomes “Michael” to the family from then on. Leigh Anne also insists he continue seeing his mother; she does not want anyone saying she kept Michael from his biological mother. The Tuohys do not ask Michael to volunteer any information about himself unless he wants to share it.

Sean begins to think about Michael’s future and grooms him to play basketball. Coach Freeze recommends Michael meet with football scout Lemming, which Michael agrees to, though he has never heard of Lemming. Briarcrest parent and offensive line coach Tim Long is impressed with Michael’s raw talent but does not know how to coach him. On the first day of spring practice, college coaches show up. NCAA rules disallow them from speaking with junior athletes, but they are permitted to watch practice. After seeing Michael perform a drill, the coaches immediately get on their phones. The Clemson coach tells Coach Freeze Michael has a Clemson scholarship. University of Tennessee head coach Phil Fulmer declares Michael “best in the nation,” a sentiment echoed in USA Today courtesy of Lemming (79). Louisiana State University head coach Nick Saban refuses to believe Michael weighs more than 285 and makes coaches put Michael on a scale. The phrase “freak of nature,” the prized left tackle quality, is used to describe Michael. In high school football, the passing game is not central, so neither is the pass rush. Freeze realizes that left tackle is central to both top-tier college football programs and the NFL and that he, in Michael, has a future NFL left tackle on his hands, “one of the most highly compensated jobs in the game” (83). Freeze moves Michael to left tackle.

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

Lewis begins filling in Michael’s story in Chapters Three and Four by introducing key people whose decisions helped position him to be discovered: Big Tony, the Tuohys, and Hugh Freeze. Lewis refrains from theorizing about these individuals’ motives and keeps his narrative tone and content descriptive. He also highlights the element of chance involved. Michael happened to be staying with Big Tony when he made the decision to take Steven to Briarcrest, so he took Michael along. Sean ran into Michael at basketball practice and identified with being a poor kid at a private school, where lunch was not free and he could not afford to buy it. Sean and Leigh Anne happened to be driving through campus at the moment Michael arrived to watch basketball practice. His plight moved Leigh Anne, and his personality endeared him to her. Freeze saw Michael’s talent and put his tape into Lemming’s hands.

Though Lemming had unresolved questions about Michael’s character, he could not deny Michael’s talent. Lemming declared him “the most striking left tackle talent he’d seen since he first met Orlando Pace,” who was at that time earning $10 million per year playing the left-tackle position for the then St. Louis Rams (75). College coaches descended on Briarcrest’s football practice to see this talent with their own eyes, and it took just one drill to convince them they were seeing a future star. Their reactions mobilized Freeze to move Michael to the left tackle position, and Michael would eventually become “the most highly sought after offensive lineman in the nation” (81). Lewis here shows how a cycle feeds itself in the football world: Lemming’s declarations about Michael brought the coaches to see him, and their reaction became a self-fulfilling prophecy when Freeze decided to move Michael to left tackle. In this case, the cycle has a positive end for Michael in that it propels him to future success, first in college and eventually in the NFL.

Later in the book, Lewis addresses cycles perpetuating themselves in the social world, especially in relation to poverty, as well as the means by which these cycles are disrupted. He lays the groundwork for that here in two ways. First, he briefly touches on Memphis’ racist history, noting that whites and blacks live at opposite ends of Memphis—segregation not by law but in practice—and pointing out that the private school system was born because of racist white residents who objected to desegregation. Second, Michael broke out of the cycle of poverty in which his mother (whose story Lewis tells briefly in Chapter Eleven) was trapped.