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A Timeline of The Blind Side: How Michael Oher and the Tuohy Family Came Together and Fell Apart
“I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this.”
In a pivotal scene from the movie, “The Blind Side,” an NCAA investigator was concerned that a Memphis couple, alumni and boosters to The University of Mississippi, also known as “Ole Miss,” were trying to influence a promising young football star who was living with their family to attend and play football at their alma mater. That couple, wealthy and white, was Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, and that young star, poor, black, and formerly homeless, was Michael Oher.
The investigator portrayed in the film goes on to say:
The NCAA fears that with your recruitment, a door might be opened. That boosters from lots of schools in the south will become legal guardians of young athletes without means and funnel them to their alma maters. I’m not saying I believe it. I’m not saying I don’t. But there are many people involved in this case who would argue that the Tuohys, they took you in, they clothed you, they fed you, they paid for your private education, they bought you a car, and paid for a tutor, all as part of a plan to assure that you’d play football for the University of Mississippi.
The NCAA investigator was skeptical of the Tuohys story that they took in Michael solely out of compassion for someone struggling to find their way without resources and support. Instead, she insinuated the more selfish motive of wanting their favorite school to secure a promising football star. And promising he was. At 6 foot, 5 inches and 330 pounds, his play at offensive tackle eventually put him as the number 38 college football recruit nationwide.
After graduating from Ole Miss, Oher would go on to play eight years in the NFL (two and a half times the average 3.3 year NFL career), including a Super Bowl win in 2013 with the Baltimore Ravens over the San Francisco 49ers and playing for the Carolina Panthers in a second Super Bowl in 2015 when they lost to the Denver Broncos.
