Oher's unlikely tale too good for filmmakers to pass up in "The Blind Side"

When the Jaguars' Quentin Groves was playing for Auburn against Michael Oher of Mississippi, Groves was doing some trash-talking until Oher stopped him with a short retort.

"C'mon, dude, just play football,'' Oher said.

"He's pretty quiet for an offensive lineman,'' Groves said. "They usually talk a lot, but Michael just does his job and goes about his business.''

Oher did his job well enough in college that he was drafted in the first round by the Baltimore Ravens last April and signed a $13.8 million contract. He's off to a solid start with the Ravens and has started every game in his rookie year.

But that's just the end of the story.

The tale of how Oher went from being a homeless, inarticulate teenager in Memphis who rarely spoke to a first-round draft pick is the stuff of movie legend.

Which is why when his story was told in Michael Lewis' book "Blind Side,'' Hollywood came calling. The result was the movie "The Blind Side,'' which was released this weekend.

Lewis' book is mainly about the emergence of left tackles in the NFL, but the most compelling part was Oher's story and the movie is about his life.

Hollywood is calling it a relationship movie, not a football movie.

The relationship is between Oher, a 6-4, 300-plus pound black youngster, and Leigh Anne Tuohy, a 115-pound blonde dynamo who is played in the movie by actress Sandra Bullock.

Leigh Anne and her husband, Sean, were living a comfortable upper class life when they crossed paths with Oher. Sean was a former basketball star at Ole Miss who made his money running a chain of fast food restaurants and doing color commentary for Memphis Grizzlies NBA games. She was an interior designer. They had two children.

Through a series of improbable events, Oher wound up at Briarcrest Christian School, where Leigh Anne had gone and her children were attending.

One thing led to another and the Tuohys took Oher in and changed his life. She got him a tutor, mentored and mothered him and he earned a high school degree, went to the Tuohys' alma mater, Mississippi, and became a Ravens first-round pick.

The Tuohys did a national conference call last week to discuss their lives and the movie, but Leigh Anne insisted she doesn't deserve the credit.

She gives it to teacher Marilyn Beasley, who is still at Briarcrest, and who first recognized that Oher was smarter than he appeared.

"She's the hero,'' Leigh Anne said. "If a teacher doesn't go beyond the normal fence line, we would have never met him. He would have fallen through the cracks.

"She's the one who said, 'this kid is really smart. It's up to us to figure out how to teach him.' ''

Oher was enrolled in 11 different schools in his first nine years of school and there was a gap of 18 months around age 10 when he apparently didn't go at all. His mother was a crack addict and his father was murdered. He didn't know what an ocean was and had never heard of the Civil War.

Beasley figured out that Oher was absorbing the information in the classroom and they would need to give him oral tests.

But it was Leigh Anne who quarterbacked the whole effort to get him an education.

When Sean was asked how early in their marriage he realized his wife would run the show, he said with a chuckle, "When she gave me the ring in college and said it was time for me to propose. Is that early enough?''

Sean is played by country singer Tim McGraw (whose real wife is Faith Hill) in the movie. Sean jokes that he and McGraw both married over their heads.

Leigh Anne said it's important that people don't come out of the movie thinking about her.

"I hope people leave the movie and will hopefully try to do something good for somebody else and try to change a kid's life. We don't have any idea of how many Michael Ohers are out there on the streets of America or the world,'' she said.

The Tuohys said actor Quinton Aaron, 25, accurately captured what Oher was like then.

The subtext of the movie is race and class in America and Leigh Anne doesn't shy away from that topic.

"It would scare you some of the comments we heard over the years,'' she said. "Even our friends were reluctant with Michael early on. The majority of them came around, but some of them didn't.''

Some questioned them on how they could have a black teenager sleeping in the same household with their teenage daughter, Collins, although Oher and their daughter are now like brother and sister. And their eight-year-old son, Sean Jr., became Oher's little brother and spent hours playing video games with him. Leigh Anne still gets upset if somebody posts a negative message about Oher on Facebook.

She admits she grew up a racist, but changed her views over the years.

Several college coaches, including Nick Saban, Phil Fulmer, Lou Holtz, Houston Nutt, Tommy Tuberville and Ed Orgeron played themselves in the movie.

The recruiting of Oher sparked controversy after Oher decided to go to Ole Miss. The NCAA suggested the Tuohys were, in effect, boosters and had deliberately taken him in because of his football prowess and steered him to their alma mater.

Since he'd never played football when the Tuohys took him in, the NCAA finally dropped the subject.

The Tuohys also make the point that the real story is not about what they did for Oher, but what Oher did for them.

"He had an amazing impact on our lives,'' Leigh Anne said. "We're closer than most families because of Michael. We spent an amazing amount of time together and it was a huge bonding process. He changed our lives and the way we view people. We now feel bad about putting labels on people and pigeonholing them. Here's a kid who seemed valueless and now he's in the NFL. Michael coming in our home had a much greater impact on us than what we did for him.''

Oher is concentrating on football and isn't doing much talking about the movie and said he's not curious about it.

That's probably because, according to the Tuohys, Oher always had an ability to block out the past although he told Baltimore reporters, "I am never ashamed of where I came from.''

In an interview with USA Today earlier this year, Oher said he doesn't know if he could have done what the Tuohys did.

"To take somebody from my neighborhood into your house? Nobody does that,'' he said. "I don't think I'd even do that. I'd help you out, but with a daughter and with the violence and drugs where I came from ... they didn't have to do that. I owe them a lot.''

Oher said he doesn't think the movie will affect his life.

"I think I will be the same,'' he said. "People don't recognize me now and I don't think they will in the next month,'' he said.

Jaguars rookie tackle Eugene Monroe, who was drafted ahead of Oher in the first round last April, said he first met Oher at a high school all-star game in San Antonio and has read the book about him. They still stay in touch and text each other.

"He's a great dude and we get along well,'' Monroe said.

Of Oher's reputation for not saying much, Monroe said: "Once you get to know him, he talks a lot.''

vito.stellino@jacksonville.com,

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