The Blind Side: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

At the end of 2004, Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy become Michael Oher’s legal guardians. They send out a Christmas card including Michael, and it never occurs to Leigh Anne that many of her friends will wonder who Michael is. Leigh Anne is a “warrior princess”—fiercely loyal to her family, which now includes Michael. Unlike a lot of talented, ambitious football players, Michael isn’t very interested in money—Leigh Anne and Sean take good care of him, and he’s going to inherit millions as the child of a successful businessman.

As Michael nears the end of high school, he faces great offers from college coaches. Privately, Sean and Leigh Anne want Michael to play for their alma mater, the University of Mississippi—“their lives were as intertwined with the place as if they’d founded it.” Hugh Freeze, however, pursues talks with the University of Tennessee on Michael’s behalf. Michael also attends LSU’s summer football camp with Justin Sparks, another talented, rich Briarcrest player. When Sparks wins an elite football scholarship from North Carolina State, Michael begins considering the college.

At the same time that Michael is considering his options for college, he is being tutored by a woman named Sue Mitchell, a Mississippi alumna herself. Mitchell tells Michael, half-jokingly, half-seriously, that the University of Tennessee is involved in an experiment to study decomposing human bodies, and buries corpses below the football field.

Meanwhile, local news stations hang on Michael’s every word for a hint about where he’ll play ball. Michael receives so many calls from coaches that Sean and Hugh Freeze have to designate a special phone-answering time of the week. Michael becomes used to flying in Justin Sparks’ family’s private jet to play games at different colleges—so much so that, when he finally has to fly in a commercial plane, he can’t understand why the trip is taking so long. A Mississippi coach notices, during one of his many visits to Memphis to watch Michael, that Michael is close with Sean Junior; he tells Sean Junior that, if Michael goes to Ole Miss, Sean Junior will get an all-access, round-the-clock pass to the school.

Leigh Anne is nervous that, if accepted to an elite football college, Michael won’t be able to cope with the pressure, or with being so far from the Tuohys. The tragic fact is that Michael hasn’t had the life experiences that other high school students take for granted. Leigh Anne takes it upon herself to show Michael how to live life like an adult. She takes him to a restaurant and orders every dish on the menu to show Michael the different foods. In all, Leigh Anne is doing for Michael “what economists had been trying to do, with little success, for less developed countries for the last fifty years.” She tries to help Michael adjust to “white Christian entrepreneurial Memphis,” teaching him how to buy clothes, score golf, and read a wine list. Leigh Anne also gives Michael a sense of his new social class: she calls poor white people “rednecks.” Less than two years after meeting the Tuohys, Michael has begun to fit in with his community. He goes to Grace Evangelical Church every Sunday and improves his grades with Sue Mitchell’s help. He adjusts to upper-class Memphis life because he has a family that loves him.

One day, Leigh Anne gets a call from Collins—there’s been an accident. Leigh Anne learns that Michael, while driving Sean Junior out to play basketball, hit another car. She finds Michael in the middle of the accident, sobbing, and tells him, “This could happen to anybody.” Then, she sees what Michael’s sobbing about: Sean Junior’s face is covered in “swollen, oozing flesh.” Sean Junior has to go to the hospital, but he’s fine, and, much to the doctors’ confusion, hasn’t even broken one bone. Later, Leigh Anne realizes what happened: during the crash, Michael reached out his arm to stop the air bag from hitting Sean Junior in the face, sustaining a nasty burn in the process. Not coincidentally, Michael scored in the 90th percentile on his career aptitude test in one category: Protective Instincts.

Shortly after the accident, coaches from three different colleges—LSU, Tennessee, and Mississippi—come to visit Michael in his home. The first coach is Nick Saban, from LSU—a school that Michael considers “a bad place” after spending a night with LSU football stars. Saban comes dressed in an Armani suit, and his manners are impeccable. Saban’s pitch is simple: LSU is going to make Michael not just an NFL star but also a college graduate. Michael says nothing—then, he asks one question: “You staying?” Michael’s question is a good one, since there have been rumors that Saban was offered an NFL job. Saban laughs and said that he hadn’t taken any NFL jobs yet—but three weeks later, he becomes head coach for the Miami Dolphins.

The next coach to visit the house is supposed to be David Cutcliffe of Ole Miss, but Cutcliffe is fired from his job. Phil Fulmer, head coach from the University of Tennessee, moves up his visit and comes to the Tuohy home a few days later—at the exact time when Michael is scheduled to visit Ole Miss. But Fulmer’s bus gets delayed, and he begs the Mississippi recruiter to wait half an hour. In the end, Fulmer shows up at the Tuohy house just as Michael is leaving with the Mississippi recruiter.

Later, Fulmer manages to visit Michael at Briarcrest. Fulmer is supposed to be giving a talk at the Tennessee high school football awards ceremony, where Michael will be named Player of the Year, and he convinces Michael to let him drive Michael from his house to the ceremony. When Fulmer shows up at the Tuohy house, he tries to ingratiate himself with Collins and Leigh Anne, but he doesn’t have Nick Saban’s polish. Nevertheless, Fulmer has a big advantage: the coach from Ole Miss has been fired while Nick Saban from LSU has agreed to take a head coaching job in the NFL. At the end of his long visit, Fulmer walks outside with Michael, and Leigh Anne and Sean notice that he and Michael talk for a long time. Fulmer drives away, and Michael comes back inside. Sean demands to know, “Did you commit to Tennessee?” Michael says nothing.

Sean Tuohy, worried that Michael has decided to play for the University of Tennessee, is sorely tempted to intervene in Michael’s football career and ensure that he chooses Mississippi, but he doesn’t want to behave unethically. However, he contemplates encouraging Michael to visit LSU again, perhaps weakening Michael’s interest in Tennessee. In the meantime, he sends Michael to play in the U.S. Army All-American game, organized by Tom Lemming. After the game, Lemming writes that Michael is “far and away the nation’s finest offensive line prospect.” Michael refuses to tell reporters where he’s going to college.

Two weeks later, Mississippi gets a new head coach, Ed Orgeron. Ed’s first order of business is convincing Michael to play for his college. Orgeron, a “hearty Cajun coach” with a thick accent, visits Michael and pitches him hard—but nobody, including Michael, can understand a word he’s saying. Michael asks Ed Orgeron, “What are you gong to do for the kids that already committed to Ole Miss?”—i.e., people, such as Justin Sparks, who signed on to play before Orgeron became coach. Orgeron replies, “Lemsday,” which means, “Let them stay.” This seems to be the right answer. Michael later says that he’s glad Orgeron won’t dismiss kids who committed to Ole Miss—he asks, “would you play for that kind of person?”

On February 1, 2005, Michael Oher holds a press conference about where he’ll go to college. Before a sea of reporters, he announces that he’ll go to the University of Mississippi, where his family went. Just a few weeks later, however, the NCAA will begin an investigation of affluent white Southerners “seizing poor black kids” from the ghetto in the hopes that they’ll attend their former schools.

After the press conference, Michael and Sean Junior play miniature baseball. In Sean Junior’s room, there is a framed bloody basketball net, which Sean Tuohy “earned” after scoring points in a legendary championship game (the blood was his). The net, Lewis says, symbolizes the love-hate relationship between the Tuohys and Ole Miss: Tuohy had to steal the net from the Mississippi trophy room late one night. While playing miniature baseball, Sean Junior asks Michael when he decided on Mississippi—all the way back in September, Michael replies.