The Blind Side

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11–12

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 7-8 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “The Pasta Coach”

At the end of December 2004, the Tuohys become Michael’s legal guardians. College recruiters expecting Michael to be a poor, black kid are surprised to find a well-connected rich kid with no evident needs and “a warrior princess” guarding him (134). In the five months between the start of his senior year and the Feb. 1, 2005 deadline for committing to a college, Michael is surrounded by people “intensely interested in what college he chose to attend” (134). NCAA rules prohibited recruiters from officially visiting Michael, but he could speak to them by phone.

Leigh Anne worries how Michael will cope at college without the support system he has at home. Michael lacks life experiences, which Leigh Anne attempts to address, but he keeps running into endless “quotidian details of upper-class American life” unfamiliar to him (140). Having seen Sean parlay athletic success into wider financial success, Leigh Anne wants Michael to achieve the same. To do so, she believes he will need to be comfortable in the world of “white Christian entrepreneurial Memphis” (141). Leigh Anne says Michael absorbs everything he is taught. His grades improve, and Leigh Anne extends her influence in his life. Michael begins to feel confident in the Tuohys’ love.

Just as Leigh Anne begins to relax, she receives a call that Michael and eleven-year-old Sean Junior are in a car accident. Michael’s truck, traveling 25 miles per hour, has skidded on ice and collided with a van also traveling 25 miles per hour. The truck’s airbags deploy, with Sean Junior’s airbag hitting Sean Junior in the face. His face swells dramatically but the airbag causes no serious damage. Michael has put out his arm and taken the brunt of the impact. At the accident scene, Michael sobs inconsolably, though Leigh Anne explains it could happen to anyone; however, a child of Sean Junior’s size is safer in the back seat. Lewis notes that a public-school test given to Michael when he was in eighth grade placed him in the 90th percentile in “Protective Instincts” (145).

The Tuohys invite three head coaches for official visits: LSU’s Nick Saban, University of Tennessee’s Phil Fulmer, and Ole Miss’s David Cutcliffe. Leigh Anne wants Michael at Ole Miss, where she could control his assimilation into her world. Michael has an uncomfortable visit at LSU, though Saban makes a positive impression during his visit. When Michael asks him if he plans to stay at LSU, Saban is noncommittal. Three weeks later, he accepts the Miami Dolphins head coaching position. Ole Miss fires Cutcliffe a week before his scheduled visit with the Tuohys. Tennessee coach Fulmer, who has become obsessed with Michael, moves up his visit. Michael notices Tennessee’s coaches are very happy about Cutcliffe’s firing.

At his home visit, Fulmer lacks the charm of Saban, with his Gucci shoes and admiration of Leigh Anne’s window treatments, and lingers well past the typical two-hour visit, until Sean makes an appearance. Fulmer promises Sean that Michael would be his starting left tackle from day one. Sean has been keeping out of the process to avoid pressuring Michael, but he worries about Michael attending Tennessee, where neither he nor Leigh Anne have contacts who could control the quality of Michael’s experience.

Ole Miss hires Ed Orgeron (“Coach O”) as their new head coach. At his press conference, he declares his first order of business is to secure Michael. He visits the Tuohys later that day. Michael’s only question for him is what he plans to do with players who have already committed to Ole Miss. Michael later explains he would not have wanted to play for someone who would pull scholarships that students had been promised. Coach O asserts that he will let them stay. He also does not promise Michael he will be the starting left tackle during his freshman year. Michael decides he likes Coach O.

The recruiting process teaches Michael about the people around him. Sean does not pressure him when he could have. Leigh Anne pressures him for the right reasons. Coach Hugh Freeze uses him to get a coaching job at Tennessee. On Feb. 1, 2005, Michael declares his intention to attend Ole Miss. In Indianapolis, “the NCAA was about to hear a rumor that white families in the South were going into the ghetto, seizing poor black kids, and adopting them, so that they might play football for their SEC alma maters” (157). In a matter of weeks, an NCAA investigator will visit the Tuohys.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Character Courses”

At least one college coach, possibly more, complains to the NCAA that the Tuohys have given Michael gifts in exchange for him attending Ole Miss. Assistant Director of Enforcement Joyce Thompson visits the Tuohys to investigate their motives. Believing the investigation offensive, Leigh Anne refuses to participate. Sean mistrusts the NCAA as well, believing they care more about appearances than right and wrong.

The recruiting process makes Michael “more cynical” about the people around him (164). Freeze leans on Michael to attend Tennessee because the school has offered him a coaching position. When Michael chooses Ole Miss, Coach O offers Freeze a coaching job there. Sean tries to explain that was “just how the world worked,” but Michael did not respect the “selfish motives of others” (164). Distrusting Thompson and finding her questions intrusive, Michael provides one word answers and declines to elaborate, frustrating her. When she finally leaves, Michael tearfully tells Leigh Anne the woman upsets him, and he does not want to speak with her again.

Meanwhile, Michael’s improved grades still did not meet the NCAA’s minimum requirement. Leigh Anne hires Sue Mitchell (“Miss Sue”) to tutor him 20 hours per week, and she “became attached to” Michael (169). Sean searches for a “loophole” around the grades problem, and Coach O suggests Brigham Young University’s internet courses, which issue grades within ten days of completion and can replace grades “from an entire semester on a high school transcript” (169-170). However, the courses have to be taken during the school year, which is almost over, unless the student is classified “Learning Disabled” (170). Sean hires a “licensed psychological examiner,” Jakarta Jessup, and her colleague Julia Huckabee—two white women who do not care about God or football—to test Michael (171).

Jessup and Huckabee find Michael’s IQ to be in the average range of 100-110 and conclude he lacks context and experiences but has a thirst for learning. When Jessup visits the Tuohys to deliver the results, Sean wants to know only if her findings will get him past the NCAA. She says yes. Had Michael’s IQ been 80, as the public-school test had concluded, he could not be classified as learning disabled because he would have been learning as well as his intelligence allowed. Having a normal IQ means his deficiencies result from a disability, and so “the great Mormon grade grab” began, with Miss Sue working with Michael to replace “a Memphis Public School F with a BYU A” every ten days (174). One night, when she needs a break, Sean takes over, reading Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” aloud. He tells Michael the poem is about Ole Miss football, and Michael becomes engaged. Sean also helps Michael visualize the poem by relating it to experiences he can understand.

NCAA investigator Thompson returns for a second round of questions. Michael asks her why college players are not paid, but she dismisses the question. Lewis says she should not have dismissed this question so lightly. The black market exists because scholarships do not meet the players’ market value. He writes that “NCAA rules had created the black market” (177). Michael and Sean both stonewall Thompson, and she becomes frustrated. When Sean offers a snide retort to one of her questions, Michael laughs. He does not know his adoptive parents’ motives, but he knows his “Pops” was funny. Thompson asks Sean if he was promised anything in exchange for delivering Michael to Ole Miss. Sean is incredulous, saying he is too rich to be bought. Thompson relaxes and tells Sean she is genuinely curious how “some poor, black kid” from the ghetto came to live with a rich, white, right-wing family (182). Sean says he and Leigh Anne wondered if they could help turn someone’s life around and whether they should try to do it again.

Michael graduates from Briarcrest and completes his BYU courses. The NCAA clears him to play. Lewis explains it is highly unusual for freshmen to play, especially on the offensive line, the second most “intellectually demanding” position after quarterback (185). Coach O says Michael is the team’s best left tackle and the high-profile player needed to attract other top-level recruits. Therefore, he will have to start his freshman year. Sean does not necessarily object though he is concerned. Michael has only played fifteen games of football and has no weight training experience. Sean tells Coach O that Michael’s gift is his memory. Coach O responds that Michael’s feet are a good gift, too.

Chapters 7-8 Analysis

Lewis continues to illustrate Michael’s character in Chapters Seven and Eight, which later in the book shows how his temperament suits him to play left tackle. He is protective (as shown in earlier chapters with Leigh Anne and Clarke) and dislikes others’ selfishness. His only question for Coach O is not about what Michael stands to gain by attending Ole Miss but rather is designed to reveal whether Coach O is a man of integrity for whom Michael would want to play.

The NCAA investigation raises questions about the Tuohys’ motives in a way that Michael finds upsetting. Lewis presents the details without editorializing, the one exception being when he shares his stance on the NCAA: Lewis believes their football scholarships do not compensate college athletes for their market value, and the NCAA’s restrictions against athletes receiving any financial compensation or gain effectively creates a black market. Lewis suggests these are Michael and Sean’s positions as well. Michael questions why college athletes are not paid, implicitly questioning the NCAA’s motives, and Sean expresses his issues with the NCAA explicitly, calling it the “Evil Empire” (181). Lewis makes clear earlier in the book that all the top coaches wanted Michael. Michael’s case is reported to the NCAA; therefore, a rival coach’s complaint—hardly an impartial position—must be behind the investigation. Michael acknowledges that he does not know the Tuohys’ motives, but neither does he know the NCAA’s and the coaches’ motives. In highlighting the uncertainty of people’s motives without overtly editorializing, Lewis emphasizes their complexity and the difficulty of reducing them, which has thematic resonance with what he says about a single football play: so much is happening at the same time that it is impossible to parse all elements fully.

Leigh Anne devotes herself to helping Michael assimilate into her world because she believes it is necessary for his success. Lewis does not address whether he perceives her as correct in her belief. Yet he points out that Joyce Thompson, the NCAA investigator, is a private-school educated black woman who is at times shocked by Michael’s upbringing and bemused when he names his twelve siblings. His description of Thompson hints at a more complicated picture of black and white communities than the East and West Memphis ones Lewis focuses on in the book.

Sean does not overtly pressure Michael, but he does strategize to ensure Michael becomes eligible to play college football. He seeks the loophole that can raise Michael’s GPA, hires the evaluators, arranges the BYU courses, and explains Michael’s learning style to so his coaches will know how to work with him. As he does with Leigh Anne, Lewis does not delve into why Sean goes to such lengths to set Michael up to succeed at Ole Miss, but he makes it clear that Sean’s efforts result in Michael meeting the NCAA’s academic eligibility standards.