The Blind Side

Tom Lemming became the first independent scout of high school talent, and it was through him that Michael Oher came to national attention. At twenty-three, Lemming began traveling as far from his Chicago home as his budget allowed to meet and rate the country’s top high school football players. It was 1978, before video and the internet, so Lemming had to ask for permission to watch 16 mm film of players. His overall accuracy and in-depth coverage gained him a “frantic following in college football (27). Before Lemming, scouting was conducted locally. Lemming’s rankings brought players to national attention and created competition for their services. Most Division I schools subscribed to Lemming’s list, and parents, players, and coaches sent him video hoping Lemming would shine his spotlight on them.

Lemming interviews Michael but is put off by his unresponsiveness. Michael has never heard of Lemming and does the interview because he was asked to, without understanding what is at stake. Though he has reservations about his character, Lemming features Michael in glowing terms, comparing him to vaunted left tackle Orlando Pace. This leads to a frenzy of interest from college coaches. Lewis says that the football market created the idea that some linemen would be paid more than others through a slow but deliberate process of evaluating talent and need. Tom Lemming, according to Lewis, was “at the beginning of the story” (27).

Big Tony grew up in Hurt Village, a housing project in West Memphis that was situated in, at the time, America’s “third poorest zip code” (37). Lewis explains that Hurt Village was initially “built for white working-class families in the mid-1950s,” later occupied by blacks, and eventually “controlled by gangs” (37). Big Tony’s mother “had been the party girl of Hurt Village,” drinking, smoking and running around, until she became Born Again in 1973 (38). For the next twenty-five years, she testified for her faith without being “tedious” and was a grandmotherly figure in Hurt Village (38). Her dying wish—that Big Tony put his son, Steven, in a Christian school—leads Big Tony to drive across Memphis to Briarcrest with Steven and Michael.

Big Tony recruits athletes from Hurt Village for the sports teams he coaches, which is how he first meets Michael. He sneaks Michael into a basketball camp and later brings him to Briarcrest with Steven. He continues to advocate for Michael, keeping in touch with Briarcrest to ask their advice when Michael struggles with his home study program, and allows Michael to stay in his home. 

Originally from Louisiana, Sean grew up poor, playing basketball at a private school where he could not afford to buy lunch. His basketball skills earned him a scholarship to Ole Miss, where he excelled on the court and held team records. Sean relied on his athletic scholarship to stay in school and felt vulnerable to his coach’s whims. He was keenly aware that if his coach benched him or kicked him off the team, he would not be able to afford tuition, and his coach was tough on him. These experiences made Sean scrappy and determined, but he did not want to repeat the same approach with young athletes. He tells Lewis, “It’s easy to beat up a kid. The hard thing is to build him up” (54). Sean identified with and wanted to help Briarcrest's “poor jocks,” and he served as an unofficial life coach for them. Through this role, he first meets Michael.

Sean and Leigh Anne meet in college: He was a basketball star, and she was a cheerleader. He graduated with no money but parlayed his basketball career into entrepreneurial ventures and amassed a chain of fast food restaurants, eventually earning enough to buy a private plane. Lewis notes that Sean was “[f]orever upgrading the trappings of his existence” and was “[h]appy to exchange his past at a deep discount for a piece of the future” (54). He teetered on the edge of bankruptcy at various points in his life but continued strategizing for the right angle, as he had done on the basketball court. This is also the approach he takes when helping Michael through the fallout of his fight with Antonio.

Lewis describes Leigh Anne as physically petite but a strong guiding force in the lives of her family. She also maintains a career as an interior designer. Her father was a U.S. Marshal who taught her “to fear and loathe blacks as much as he did” (56). She was a member of Briarcrest’s first graduating class, her father having placed her in the school to avoid school desegregation. Meeting Sean, who was close with his black teammates on the Ole Miss basketball team, changed her mindset. Explaining why she connected with Michael, Leigh Anne says she was drawn to his gentle nature and sweet temperament.

While Sean quietly helps Michael by opening a lunch tab for him and donating to the tuition fund for academically-disadvantaged students, Leigh Anne takes a more direct approach. She picks him up from basketball practice and takes him shopping at a store in his neighborhood where he feels comfortable. Alarmed by his sleeping conditions, she tells him to pack his things and move in with the Tuohys. When he is injured in a game, she is the one the coaches call down from the stands. Leigh Anne provides direction and affection to Michael, and the two become close. She strives to help fill in the gaps in his experiential knowledge and hires a tutor, Miss Sue, to address Michael’s academic needs. Leigh Anne refuses to participate in the NCAA investigation on the grounds that she finds it offensive. At the end of the book, Leigh Anne wants to do more to help inner-city athletes.

Miss Sue is Michael’s tutor and has thirty-five years of teaching experience, including time at some of Memphis’ toughest public schools. Briarcrest has rejected her for a teaching position because she is not Born Again and “advertised herself as liberal” (168). Lewis writes that Miss Sue cares about Ole Miss football and tells Michael a scary story about University of Tennessee to discourage him from attending there. At the same time, she “became attached to” Michael and refuses to let him quit when he becomes frustrated (169). She follows him to Ole Miss and continues tutoring him while he is in college. She works with other student athletes as well, and Michael becomes jealous when she grows particularly close to one young man who tearfully tells her, “Nobody ever loved me till you” (235).

Hugh Freeze is the senior coach at Briarcrest when Michael applies to the school. Freeze recognizes Michael’s transcripts indicate he is not academically prepared to attend the school. Though he does not yet know how valuable Michael’s size and skills will be, he recognizes Michael’s potential to contribute to the school’s sports teams. Hugh advocates for Michael to be accepted. Later, when Michael becomes eligible to play sports, Hugh sends his tape to Tom Lemming. Upon realizing the value of talented left tackles, Freeze moves Michael to the position. During the recruiting process, Hugh encourages Michael to attend the University of Tennessee, where Hugh has been offered a coaching position. When Michael chooses Ole Miss, Coach O offers him a position there. Michael disrespects Hugh’s maneuvering and refers to him as “the Snake” (156).

Lewis describes Coach O as a “human getter of adrenaline and testosterone” (220). He is named head coach of Ole Miss during Michael’s recruitment. It is his first head coaching opportunity, and he approaches it with exuberance. At his introductory press conference, he declares recruiting Michael to be his top priority and visits the Tuohys later that same day. Michael’s value lies both in his play and in his ability to attract other top high school players, especially black players, to Ole Miss. Michael decides he likes Coach O when Coach O says he will not revoke the scholarships offered to students before he was hired. Coach O is originally from Louisiana and speaks with an incomprehensible accent that Lewis transliterates—for example: ReddostahCOMpeet’n? means “Ready to start competing?” (220). Only Sean can fully understand him. Coach O insists Michael start his freshman year, an unusual opportunity for a freshman due to the demanding nature of the position, both physically and intellectually. The rarity of such a decision raises Michael’s profile.

Bill Walsh created a new kind of passing game that relied on short passing routes of five to ten yards. This passing strategy got the ball out of the quarterback’s hands quickly, reduced the number of decisions the quarterback had to make, and increased his accuracy. It also minimized the risk of interceptions. It earned the somewhat-pejorative nickname “nickel-and-dime offense” but eventually became known as the West Coast offense. Teams throughout the league adopted the strategy, which raised the quarterback’s profile and, along with it, the profile of Walsh’s most important defender, the left tackle. Walsh personified the methodical, strategic approach, saying that he would “cleanse himself of emotion before a game” (98). Describing Walsh standing on the sideline as a rookie head coach, Lewis writes that he appeared “in the pose of a man before a fire with a glass of port in one hand and volume of Matthew Arnold’s essays in the other” (98).