This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Mike Sykes.
Can you put yourself into Michael Oher’s shoes right now?
He’s 37 years old. He’s played a full NFL career, made millions of dollars and won a Super Bowl trophy despite everything he’s faced in his life.
Yet, what most people know him for is reportedly part of a deliberate lie, according to Oher himself.
Not a lie that he came up with. Not some scheme that he concocted to catapult himself into the zeitgeist and give himself 15 minutes of fame. No, instead, Oher alleges his “story” in The Blind Side, which depicts his journey of being cared for and later adopted by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy, was rooted in deception.
According to a court petition, the former NFL lineman says he was coaxed into agreeing to a conservatorship — not a legal adoption — with the Tuohys just a few months after his 18th birthday in 2004, per ESPN’s latest from Michael Fletcher, allowing the family to make business deals in Oher’s name.
RELATED: Michael Oher is telling us ‘The Blindside’ was a lie. Here’s everything we know so far.
That’s where the lies first started, Oher alleges, as the Tuohys told him they’d formally adopted him and he was part of their family. The story was so inspirational on the surface journalist Michael Lewis — a childhood friend of Sean’s — wrote a book about it. That book turned into a movie. That movie turned into millions.
Oher says he didn’t see a dime of any of it.
But even if he did, it almost certainly wouldn’t have eased any of the pain that he feels today.
He was betrayed by people he thought loved him. His image was stolen and used to fulfill every racist white savior trope that Hollywood had to offer. In retrospect, it wasn’t hard at all to tell that any of this was a lie.
Hollywood’s take on Oher’s story was that of a rich, white family taking in a young, Black boy out of the kindness of their hearts. When they brought him home, he was a savage who knew nothing but the streets. He had no family. He had no friends. He certainly didn’t have football. Never mind the fact he had all of these things before he met the Tuohys, but that’s not as compelling of a story.
We were told the Tuohys saved this boy. They taught him everything he knows. They helped him adapt and thrive. And, according to them, they wanted nothing in return for it. (Except for him to play for Ole Miss, I guess.)
By making Oher into someone who had nothing, the story made space for the Tuohys to give him everything. In reality, it looks like the Tuohys might have taken everything instead, namely his humanity. If it’s true they never legally adopted Oher and led him to believe they did, why should he — or anyone familiar with Oher’s story — trust anything the Tuohys did for him in the first place?
Here’s the kicker: With this story dropping now, everyone is suddenly championing Oher for finally coming out and telling the truth. But this isn’t new. At all. Oher has been telling us that he hated The Blind Side for years. He only ever talked about what the movie took away from him and how it made people perceive him. They thought he couldn’t be a leader and that he couldn’t learn. It was almost like they didn’t see him as human.
But when he first told us this back in 2015, nobody wanted to listen. All everyone talked about was what fame the movie granted him and how grateful he should be.
Quinton Aaron, the man who actually played Oher in the movie, essentially told him to shut up and dribble. Different sport, but you get the point.
“At the end of the day, bro, you are a millionaire, you’re famous, you are a Super Bowl champ, you have an amazing family that loves you, friends, fans and teammates. Who gives a damn about what people say or think who wanna criticize your game, bro, that shouldn’t matter. Somebody is always gonna have something to say that you’re not gonna like.”
That was that. We didn’t really hear from Oher after that. And can you blame him? He shared his deepest pains with the world only for the world to simply tell him he was complaining too much.
I ask you, again, can you put yourself in Michael Oher’s shoes? Imagine living a lie created by people who are supposed to love you and then having people tell you that you’re lucky to have been lied to in the first place.
I don’t know about you, but that would ruin me. It’s a miracle that it hasn’t ruined him. We should be thankful for that.
And, hopefully, the next time someone tells us that things aren’t OK, we listen to them instead of first pointing out all the good things in their life. No amount of money or fame can heal being betrayed by people you love. And no one should have to wait nearly 20 years to get the closure they deserve.
Quick hits: Baseball’s playoff picture … The Jets’ awkward running back room … and more
— Charles Curtis is giving you a birds-eye view of the MLB’s playoff picture here.
— Michael Carter downplaying Dalvin Cook right before the Jets signed him is wild. Robert Zeglinski has more.
— Mitchell Northam ranked the live-action Star Wars shows so far and some of this might surprise you.
— The team put together the best bets on win totals for the 2023 NFL season. You’ll want to tap in on this one.
Y’all have a fantastic day. Be kind to one another.