The Blind Side family had a chance to see their story played out on the big screen, and now they get to watch adopted son Michael Oher in the Big Game.
A few years after the movie The Blind Side was released about Michael’s rise from an at-risk youth living in poverty in Memphis with a largely absent mother to an NFL draft pick, the Baltimore Ravens lineman is preparing to play in the Super Bowl. The game is especially sweet for The Blind Side family, the Tuohy family.
The game is being played in New Orleans, where step father Sean Tuohy went to school with author Michael Lewis, who wrote The Blind Side . The book focused both on Michael Oher ‘s life and the rise of strong and mobile linemen to protect a quarterback’s blind side.
That’s not the only connection The Blind Side family has to the big game. Sandra Bullock, who played stepmother Leigh Ann Tuohy, also has a home in The Big Easy.
“And there are people that think that’s a coincidence,” Sean Tuohy told The Associated Press . “How stupid is that?
“We’ve got a huge sign in our garage that says: ‘We believe in miracles,’” he continued. “For other people, it may be hard to understand that. For us, it’s easy.”
Michael Oher said he’s excited to play in the Super Bowl, but doesn’t have great feelings for The Blind Side, the Los Angeles Times noted.
Leigh Ann Tuohy said that she is proud of Michael Oher, but also sad to think that many others who lived in poverty did not get the chances he did.
“To me, when I look at Michael, the only down side of it is, you sit there and go, ‘If someone as immensely talented as Michael Oher, that society pretty much didn’t value, almost falls through the cracks, can you imagine who gets left behind,” Leigh Anne Tuohy said. “So you sit there and go, ‘How many kids are out there that if given a chance can be a Michael Oher.’”
“I’m tired of the movie,” he said this week. “Football is what got me here, and the movie, it wasn’t me.”
Oher said he doesn’t like the way the movie portrayed him as slow, and how he failed to grasp even the basic concepts of football before The Blind Side family taught him.