I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [70]
When I called him from my dorm room at Ole Miss, I asked him the question he loves to share when discussing The Blind Side: "Are you the guy who keeps asking every other person in the world questions about me when you could just come and ask me?"
Yes, it turned out, he was that guy.
"Man, you're big time!" I laughed. And after that, we struck up a bit more of a conversation. He was just wrapping up his writing of the book, so the timing worked out well. After a couple of discussions, he felt he had the story he needed to help bring a human face to the position of left tackle.
I think we all sort of thought that that was the end of it all: The book was finished and probably would be a big hit with sports guys and people interested in strategy, and that was it. After all, no one gets that wrapped up in a football story, right? Obviously, we were wrong.
THE BOOK WAS RELEASED LATE in 2006. The Times chose to run as their exclusive scoop on the book a piece called "The Ballad of Big Mike," which was all about me and how I ended up where I was. The story was in the September 24, 2006, issue of the magazine, during the fall of my second year of college. To be honest, the book didn't really affect me much at first--initially I think it was mostly football fans who were reading it. It hadn't yet become a huge phenomenon.
Less than two years later, the movie rights were sold and Lewis was working on a screenplay with John Lee Hancock, who would go on to direct the movie. It turns out that football fans weren't the only people reading the book. Most people weren't excited about the ins and outs of the left and right tackle positions; they were connecting with the human side of the story.
Filming started in Atlanta in the spring of 2009 as I was finishing up my senior year of college and getting ready to graduate. I was way too busy focusing on the last of my classes to be too worried about any of that. I had heard that Sandra Bullock had signed on to play Leigh Anne, which seemed like good casting to me; Sandra seemed like she was strong enough to pull off the role in a way that would really help get Leigh Anne's personality across to people who didn't know her.
When the movie opened in New York in November, I couldn't go to the premiere. The Ravens were in the middle of their season and our next opponent was the Colts. There was no way I could take off time from getting ready for a game against one of our toughest opponents. The Tuohys all went, though. Leigh Anne was in a black evening gown; Collins wore a purple one. They both looked really beautiful from the pictures I saw. Sean and S.J. were both in suits, and S.J. wearing an Ole Miss tie, which I thought was pretty cool.
The film also had a debut in New Orleans the day after its New York premiere. That was a great choice, since Sandra cares a lot about that city. She bought a house there and has been helping support a lot of local students since Hurricane Katrina wiped everything out. Also, her little boy Louis was adopted from New Orleans, and she was quietly finishing up the last stages of that process as the movie was opening. Sean also grew up in New Orleans; his dad was a famous high school basketball coach with an amazing record and a great reputation as a character. So it made sense to celebrate the movie in a city that could really use some positive excitement. But again, I wasn't able to be there because of my work schedule and our upcoming game on Sunday.
As a matter of fact, I didn't end up seeing the movie until the season was over in early January. It had already been in the theaters for over a month by then, and I had several guys on other teams say, "Hey, Hollywood!" when we faced one another on the line. The funny thing was, they were mostly nice about the movie; several of them said they liked it a lot. For a bunch of guys who make a living trash-talking and tackling one another on the field, it was nice to