by Michael Oher
The same thing would happen on Sunday mornings. The Tuohys never told me I had to go to church with them, but if I was staying with them and they were my family, I felt I needed to go with them. I’d be the first one with my shirt and tie on, sitting downstairs on the sofa and looking at my watch constantly. I liked church. I wanted to be there on time. I didn’t want to come in late because, let’s be honest, there’s no way someone like me can slip down the aisle into an empty spot in the pew totally unnoticed.
It was those little quirks in our relationship that let me know we were really a family. I could get frustrated or annoyed at someone, and they could get frustrated or annoyed with me. We didn’t have to worry about being polite to one another all the time because I wasn’t a guest. It was my house, too. They used to tease me as we’d drive to church because I would point out various corners where I used to sell papers, including the one where I made the most money, until a Walmart was opened just a block or so away and it took away my business. After a few weeks of that, whenever we’d all be in the car driving somewhere, someone would point to a random place on the street and say, “Did you sell papers there, Michael?” (Sometimes, they’ll even do it in a totally different city, and it always makes me laugh.) I loved the joking because it meant that I was as real a part of the life of that family as anyone else. It was wonderful.
There was just one condition for living with the Tuohys, and this had been made clear to me since I first started relying on them: They wanted to make sure I was going to keep a relationship with my birth family. At no point did they want there to be any kind of a feeling like they had taken me away from my mother, or kept me from her and made me cut all ties. I was nervous about those visits to see my mother at first. Sean and Leigh Anne didn’t push me to tell them why, but it was the same fear I’d had ever since I started living with Tony. I felt like I was fighting for every inch of distance I got between me and the old neighborhood and the thought of going back seemed like it was dangerous because it might pull me back into old habits, old friendships, and old ways of thinking and acting. I didn’t love my brothers or mother any less, but I felt like keeping a safe distance from the’hood, at that point, was an act of survival.
But I went. Every other week or so I drove over to that side of town in Sean’s Ford F-150 truck and I saw whichever of my brothers was around; usually it was Marcus or Carlos. I visited Craig whenever I could. I saw my mother, and it hurt so badly because I hated to see what drugs had done to her life. She was worn out, broken, and just a shell of herself. The loving, happy woman I remembered from when she was clean during my childhood didn’t seem to be there, deep down in her soul anymore.
Eventually, Sean offered her a job at one of the Taco Bells that he owned near her home so that she would have a steady job that might help her stay clean. It was a good arrangement for about a week, but then she started not showing up for work or showing up on the wrong days. She kept at it, showing up occasionally, but at least she was still showing up. I wanted to know she was trying and I was glad Sean cared, too.
Sean and Leigh Anne wanted to make sure that my mother was a part of my football life as well. And that was a part of my life that was growing and taking off in ways that surprised even me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Finding Football
As I mentioned earlier, basketball was my first love. From the time I watched that Phoenix-Bulls game when I was seven, I was obsessed with it. Football would be my favorite sport during football season, but when that was over, I’d go back to basketball. That was where I saw myself when I pictured my future—on the basketball court, the scariest thing to ever block a shot but also totally graceful as I flew through the air taking the ball to the basket. And it wasn’t a crazy dream, either. I was really good at basketball, and a whole lot quicker and more skilled than anyone expected out of someone my size.
I had made enough progress academically in my first few months at Briarcrest that I was eligible to play the last couple of games of the basketball season. First, I played the last five that the JV had scheduled, but, unfortunately, there wasn’t a jersey that fit me. I ended up playing in an old practice T-shirt with the school’s name across the front and the number written on the back in permanent marker. It wasn’t exactly the most sophisticated-looking uniform, but it worked. The varsity season was a little bit longer, and I was able to play the last six games of their season; but by that point, someone had made me a better team shirt with the numbers actually ironed on instead of drawn.
We did very well the next two years and actually ended up as the runners-up to the state Division II title my senior season, and my high school stats were an average of 22 points per game and 10 rebounds; but sometimes I had a frustrating time on the court, since I was still having the same issues with fouling that had always haunted me when I played. The refs seemed to love to blow the whistle at me for fouling the other team even though I actually wasn’t doing it very much at all. I just had so much body, being well over six feet and about three hundred pounds at the time, that it didn’t seem like a fair match-up for whoever I was covering, or maybe they just weren’t used to watching someone that big on the court and couldn’t see around me all the time to recognize that I really wasn’t committing any more fouls than anyone else. It finally got to the point that I could hardly step out on the court without the ref blowing his whistle at me. I was so frustrated that I didn’t know what to do—it felt like the refs were competing to see who could call more fouls on me each game. The Briarcrest coaches, and even the fans, were getting fed up with it, too. They could all see that I wasn’t being overly physical or aggressive with anyone, but the refs seemed to think I was an easy target to make calls against.
The situation finally got resolved when Leigh Anne came marching into the gym before a game one day carrying a video camera. She introduced herself to the referees, pointed me out to them as her son, and let them know that there had been some problems about a lot of unfair fouls being called against me in the past. She told the ref that she would be personally recording the game, and if there were any blatant calls against me that clearly were not accurate, she would be sending the tape to the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association to make sure that the ref never called another game for Briarcrest. That did the trick. Any foul called after that was one I deserved.
The style of basketball they played there was totally different not just from the street-ball rules I had grown up with, but also from the way we played in the city schools. The coaching style was different, too. Tony had been excited about Briarcrest as an option when he found out their new coach was a well-respected high school coach named John Harrington, but for me, the new way of doing things made me back off of basketball a little bit. I stayed with it and played varsity basketball my junior and senior years—but my focus started to shift from the court to the gridiron.
Everyone seemed to think that the football field was the place for me, but I wasn’t so sure at first. I loved the game, but as I started practicing for the season my junior year, I discovered that I didn’t love to play it in such a structured way. At Briarcrest, the game was more mental, while at Westwood, Manassas, and the empty lots around Hurt Village, the game was much more physical. With Coach Hugh Freeze at Briarcrest, we didn’t spend nearly as much time doing weight training as I had with Coach Johnson at Westwood. At first I was a little frustrated, but then I realized that most of my new teammates weren’t going to college to play sports. If they were given an opportunity to play in college, they’d take it, but these were pretty much all kids who were going to college for academics. Their scholarships were going to be for their grades more than for their sports statistics. A guy like me, for whom athletics was going to be my ticket to school, who would have to fight to get the grades to even be considered by a college—I was a new type of player, and I don’t think the coaches at Briarcrest really knew just what to do with me at first.
One thing I definitely understood,
though, was how the game worked. In the movie The Blind Side, you see S.J. teaching me different plays using ketchup bottles and spices. I know stuff like that makes for a good story on screen, but in reality, I already knew the game of football inside and out. Like I said before, I didn’t just watch it as a kid—I studied it, learning the plays and what each position did. When I was struggling with homework at school, studying sports was a subject where I could have been an honors student. I didn’t just learn the rules, but I studied every play and every position, trying to understand strategy and technique. Yeah, it might have taken a little while for me to get used to a new way of playing at Briarcrest, but it wasn’t because I didn’t know what was going on; it was because understanding the how and whys of something is a lot different from doing it in real life.
Learning to play with a lot of structure and a coach who was demanding in a different kind of way was very important, though. What I came to realize is that I would have to be able to do that in order to get to college and to survive there. You can be the best player in the world, but if you are un-coachable because of your attitude, you’ll never get anywhere. Talent will only take you so far. You’ve also got to be willing to work with your team and respect your coach.
In my case, I knew I was good, but I also knew I had a lot more to learn about putting everything I understood about the game into my body and making it totally natural when I played. I also was frustrated a lot because we couldn’t seem to find the right place for me on the team. Everyone said I was a natural-born football player, but no one seemed sure where to play me.
We had to try a bunch of different positions on the defensive line until we finally found the best fit. It was easy to see that right or left tackle was a good place for me, and I could play either one, but once Coach Freeze put me in at left tackle, everything changed. I started to love the game in a way I never knew I could before because I wasn’t just playing a game. I had a responsibility, a job. I was protecting the quarterback, but I also had to watch everyone else in the lineup and guess as to how the charge to the line would play out. I think that after quarterback, of course, left tackle is the biggest intellectual challenge in the entire game.
Some people may think after watching the movie that I’m a dumb kid who just blocks well, but I’d like to see any of them try to stand in as left tackle for even one play, and see how effective they are at reading the defensive line. This isn’t a position for dummies. I could tell that right away, and after each game, my brain felt almost as sweaty as my body. It was a workout for my mind, and I hit the showers feeling like I’d just finished reading some huge book, which was a great feeling.
Just like in basketball, though, I kept running into challenges with pointless calls by some refs. The rules required that your jersey had to stay tucked into your pants, but mine was never long enough, so it would always come out during games, no matter how many times I kept tucking it in. The rules also were very specific, for some reason, about the bottom of the shirt having a finished seam. Once Leigh Anne saw that this was an ongoing problem for me and that the refs seemed to be hung up on calling me out for this, she took my jerseys to a professional seamstress who sews curtains and other things for her decorating business. They got some jersey fabric and added about five or six inches onto the bottom of all of my football shirts and made sure that the edge was perfectly sewn in a professional seam. It was great! I could tuck my jersey into my football pants and not worry about it. I didn’t have to constantly check to make sure all the edges were tucked back in between every single block, or to make sure that the bottom didn’t sneak out when I got into position to run the next play.
At first, all of the excitement over my skills on the field seemed a little crazy. I knew I had been blessed with athletic talent, but I still thought of myself as a basketball player who just happened to be good at football, too. My stats started to climb, and I soon realized what a lot of college coaches were seeing: I was just about the toughest left tackle around. During my two years of varsity football at Briarcrest, I didn’t allow a single sack.
By the time recruiting visits started up my senior year, I was totally overwhelmed by the attention. I kept finding my name in the national rankings for high school recruits—ranking systems and top ten lists I didn’t even know existed. Suddenly, it seemed like every college around was beating on my door to get me to go there, when just a few years before it had been a bit of a fight just to get into high school.
It was a challenge, meeting all of those important coaches. I’ve always been shy, but I was especially nervous about sitting down and having a conversation with them. I was nervous about traveling overnight to visit the schools. All those old doubts about trusting people began to sneak back in. What would they think of me? They all knew my background—would they decide I’m not the kind of person they want on their team? And what about my manners? The last thing I wanted was to come off as ignorant.
That was a big issue in the Tuohy house. Leigh Anne threw herself into the task of making sure I knew my way around a fancy dinner table and that I had a good sense of what certain restaurant dishes were. We would go out to different fancy restaurants in town and we would order pretty much everything on the menu. She’d explain to me a little about each dish, and I’d try to get an idea of what it tasted like and how to handle it on my plate. Her goal wasn’t to “fix” me, as if not knowing those things somehow made me broken. Not at all. She just wanted to make sure that I would feel comfortable in any situation, and I am glad that she did. Now I can walk into any interview, any nice restaurant, any sporting event, and feel confident about how I come across.
It might sound like a silly thing to worry about with football coaches coming to town. A coach doesn’t care if you know the difference between the different forks in a place setting or if your tie comes from Walmart or Brooks Brothers. They really don’t. It’s not about impressing them with fashion or flashy jewelry or a nice house—I guarantee you that any Division I coach is probably richer than 99 percent of the kids he recruits. They aren’t there to be impressed by anything about you except the fact that you are a good athlete and a reliable player.
But I came to understand that first impressions do matter, and as a college athlete, you are ultimately a representative of your team, your coach, your program, and your school. The same is true wherever you go in life, whatever your job may be. There is a right way and a wrong way to act in different settings. It is so important to have a basic working understanding of etiquette. You can’t act the same way in a McDonald’s as you would in a fine dining restaurant. You can’t talk to a coach the same way you would talk to your friends. It is so important to have a sense of the situation and what kind of behavior it requires. It’s not a matter of snobbery; it’s a matter of understanding how the world works and showing your smarts by picking up on the difference of each setting.
It is a lesson I am very, very grateful for because it is definitely something I had never even considered when I was living in my old neighborhood, and it makes a big difference—fair or not—in how other people see you. It is the same reason that I always care about ironing my clothes and taking care of my appearance. I want to give the impression of being put-together and respectable. Commentator Chris Collinsworth made a remark to Bob Costas when they were doing the commentary for a Ravens game one time that when you first met me you’d think I had just left the local country club. I appreciated that because it meant that I came across as polite and intelligent.
When I sat down with each of those college coaches or went on those recruiting visits, I wanted to make sure that they knew what they would be getting in me: a guy who would play his heart out and give every ounce of effort to the game, but also someone who would represent the program well. After all, this wasn’t just a game to me. This was my life’s goal of achieving something better turning into reality.
In the end, after visits to several schools and meetings with a lot of coaches, I picked the Uni
versity of Mississippi. Tennessee and Oklahoma were both schools I liked a lot, but in the end, I was most comfortable about being closest to the community I’d become a part of. Just like I had wanted to go wherever Steve went to high school, I wanted to be near wherever Collins went to college, close enough to see S.J.’s baseball games, close enough for Leigh Anne and Sean to come to my football games. I had been separated once before from the family I loved. Now I finally was part of a stable family, and had good mentors, good support, and a lot of people who believed in me. I wasn’t about to give all of that up to start over again somewhere else.
MY SENIOR YEAR, my mother started trying to make it to a lot of my Briarcrest games, sometimes bringing one of my brothers or Craig along, too. Before Senior Night for football, Leigh Anne gave her money to pick out a nice church dress to wear as the seniors were escorted out on the field by their parents. Tony was driving my mother over and they were running late. The announcer had gotten to just before the Os and they still weren’t there, so Sean and Leigh Anne brought me back in line to the Ts, where they were waiting to walk out with Collins. Just before they called us up, I spotted my mother running across the track in a gold dress. She was out of breath as she took my arm, but she made it and I walked out on the field with her on one side and the Tuohy family on the other.