The Blind Side

It is March 2004, and Tom Lemming, a famous football scout, has just received a tape. Lemming, who’s discovered all kinds of football legends, receives thousands of tapes from aspiring players who want to impress him. The latest tape he’s received is from Michael Oher, who plays for a small private school, Briarcrest, which has no real history of producing football talent. Nobody in Memphis football seems to have heard of Oher. Based on the tape, however, Lemming sees that Oher is big and fast, comparable with NFL athletes he’s discovered in the past.

Tom Lemming walks into the football meeting room at the University of Memphis, and waits to meet Michael Oher—meanwhile, “the ghost of Lawrence Taylor” is waiting. Taylor’s legendary performances in the NFL in the 1980s changed football, leading to a spike in salaries for players on the quarterback’s blind side. Fifteen years ago, it would have been strange to think that certain linemen would be paid more highly than others. But now, the blind-side lineman, usually the left tackle, is often the highest paid.

In 1978, Tom Lemming began searching America for the best football talent. At the time, the idea of a single scout traveling the country for high school football was unheard of, but soon, Lemming had a devoted following—he was, in effect, the only national scout in high school football. Division I coaches would beg Lemming for tips about prospective players, and many sports fans subscribed to his newsletter. By the nineties, Lemming was no longer traveling the country as much—coaches sent him videotapes of their players. He’d acquired a reputation for being very accurate with his predictions of who would and wouldn’t make it to the NFL.

Lemming was particularly fond of fast, violent pass rushers, many of whom wound up playing in the NFL. He also supported especially big linemen, with a lot of girth in the lower body (which made it harder for Lawrence Taylor-types to run past him). Lemming also knew that left tackles had to be fast, so that they could keep up with the offense.

At the time, football was becoming a bigger industry than ever before. Good quarterbacks, even rookies, regularly commanded salaries in the tens of millions, paid out over the course of seven years. As a result, it became especially important to protect quarterbacks; thus, left tackles commanded high salaries, too. But Lemming wants to meet Michael Oher in person, because he knows that sometimes videotapes can be deceptive. Furthermore, he recognizes that football is a team sport, meaning that players with poor character will never be great. Football often attracts big, aggressive people—in many ways, the people who were most likely to get into trouble outside the game.

When he first meets Michael Oher at the University of Memphis, Lemming realizes that Michael is so big he can barely fit through the door. He has the perfect body for a left tackle. Lemming asks Michael questions, but Michael doesn’t say anything; he just shrugs and refuses to speak. Not once in Lemming’s quarter-century career has a player refused to talk to him. Lemming is confused—he can’t tell if Michael is aloof, rude, shy, or something else. It never occurs to Lemming that Michael doesn’t say anything to him because he has no idea who Lemming is, has never thought of himself as a football player, and has never even played left tackle.