Leigh Anne told The New York Times point blank that she was raised by a racist father to be a racist herself, but she’d moved past that retrograde upbringing by the time she’d grown up and had children of her own, including a daughter named Collins, who was in high school at the same time as Oher. They took him in for the weekend, an arrangement that soon became permanent.Ī tutor was hired. Eventually, on Thanksgiving weekend, the family crossed paths with Oher, who was walking alone in the rain, wearing his only pair of shorts and going nowhere in particular. Soon after Sean first met Oher, he set up a standing cafeteria account for him so that he’d be able to eat lunch every day. Photo: Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images Football dominance opened up new doors Michael Oher poses for a photograph with his family at Radio City Music Hall for the 2009 NFL Draft on April 25, 2009, in New York City moving around ketchup bottles or Leigh Anne explaining to me what blocking is about, I watched those scenes thinking, 'No, that's not me at all! I've been studying - really studying - the game since I was a kid!' That was my main hang-up with the film. ![]() “Quinton Aaron did a great job acting the part, but I could not figure out why the director chose to show me as someone who had to be taught the game of football. “I felt like it portrayed me as dumb instead of as a kid who had never had consistent academic instruction and ended up thriving once he got it,” Oher wrote in his 2014 memoir, I Beat the Odds. Just as in real life, the fictionalized Oher ultimately becomes a force of nature in high school football, but how that happened and the timeline his development followed was a real bone of contention. It’s a minor point, but one that cascades throughout the movie and led to Oher’s big disagreement with how his story played out on the big screen. The movie posits that their young son S.J.’s mismatched schoolyard friendship with Oher is the catalyst for their involvement in his life, while in reality, it was actually Sean noticing Oher on the sidelines at the gym that prompted their involvement. In The Blindside, Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, the outspoken matriarch of the family and wife of Sean Tuohy ( Tim McGraw), a former college basketball star and wealthy fast food entrepreneur. The Tuohys are conservative Christians and taking Oher in raised eyebrows in their community, but it was quickly a natural fit, even if it didn’t go exactly the way the movie suggested. The kid was out of place, shy, awkward and way behind. But entering Briarwood was no panacea and produced no immediate change. Within a few months, Simpson had a change of heart and admitted Oher to his school. ![]() The principal, Steve Simpson, felt stirrings of sympathy and issued Oher a challenge: get his grades up in another private school and he could enter the far more prestigious Briarwood the next semester. This was a kid who’d never been given half a chance, he told the school president and principal, making the case for a very large exception to their typical admissions process. Still, the school football coach was interested in Oher, not just as a prospect for the team but as a redemption story. Photo: Matthew Sharpe/Getty Images A chance trip to a prestigious private school changed his life… eventually Michael Oher stands with his family during senior ceremonies prior to a game against the Mississippi State Bulldogs at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on November 28, 2008, in Oxford, Mississippi
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