Molly Smith is his daughter, not daughter-in-law, and she did get executive producer credit and co-launched her production company on the success of the film.
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While I appreciate your opinion of him and his accomplishments concerning FedEx, I read that section and understand how some people might feel it reeks of privilege. Two people died and it sounds like there were no consequences. Would someone like Michael Oher be given the same treatment?
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Letâs move on from Fred Smith and any other tangents.
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No telling. But it seems that much of the controversy about this story revolves around privilege. And whose side of the story will be believed.
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I donât actually have an opinion on this story, since I have not educated myself fully on it. But a question, if there is evidence that the threat of releasing a negative story to the press unless 15 million is paid, wouldnât that be considered blackmail, and illegal?
A lawyer friend once said the best law school course was taxation because unlike criminal or family law, the cases were mostly about rich people squabbling with the IRS, so it was easy to be impartial and feel no sympathy for either side. Sounds to me like this is a similar case: neither side looks 100% rainbows and unicorns.
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You have to understand how strict the NCAA was with recruits. Saban couldnât help Michael Oher with anything until he got to college. Couldnât help with the grade repair, getting a qualifying SAT score, transportation to the test or BYU courses. Couldnât provide Oher with more than one visit to campus and then only provide 3 meals per day for 2 days. And that was only if Oher chose LSU as one of his 5 overnight visits. No college could help him. A GC could, but how much help were your kidsâ GC at the little details, reminding them of deadlines, helping them fill out applications? My kidsâ GC did NOTHING. The athletic department had a part time secretary who helped with the NCAA documents for that school only.
No one from colleges could help Oher with his NCAA clearing house paperwork. If Iâm counting correctly, Oher went to 2 high schools his freshman year and then Briarcrest, but also BYU. He would have needed all 4 school to send an original transcript to the clearing house, proof of graduation, his test score and I donât remember what else. It didnât cost much, but maybe $100 for my daughter -and many phone calls. Iâm really good at paperwork but this was tough.
Could someone else have helped him? Sure, but who? Hugh Freeze, his coach, wasnât helping with the documentation. Freeze said he wouldnât have gotten into college without the Tuohys and I believe that. If he hadnât gone to any college, he couldnât play in the NFL until 3 years after his high school class graduated, so heâd have 3 years of hanging out in Memphis doingâŠ? He could have gone to a junior college and tried to transfer to a D1 program after that. Watch âLast Chance Uâ and see how hard that is to do.
Sure there is a book because the Tuohys knew an author, and then there was a movie because they both knew someone who could produce it. Would Oher been better off without the movie and books? Itâs his position he would have been. Heâs an introvert and may have been happier without the publicity, although he did go on the speaking circuit with Leigh Anne for a while still a player.
IMO the Tuohys didnât care that much about the money (and didnât know the book and movie were going to be a big success) but liked the excitement, the publicity, the attention.
This LATimes piece is pretty honest:
"Thatâs precisely what happened to Michael Oher. The Touhys helped him game the educational system so that he could remain in high school, then convinced him to attend their alma mater, [Ole Miss]. He was eventually drafted in the first round by the [Baltimore Ravens].
Lewis chronicles all this as if it were a heroic journey. It does not appear to trouble him that, for every Michael Oher, there are tens of thousands of African American children who will never be rescued, who are born into broken family systems, crumbling schools and underserved neighborhoods.
What these children need isnât the charity of some wealthy family or the stern wisdom of some sanctified coach. They need the kind of social, economic and educational support that can begin to repair the damage wrought by two centuries of systemic racism and economic injustice"
Michael Oher was âsavedâ by the private school system of Memphis, and then a family got him into college and then the NFL. If the Tuohys or another family hadnât helped Oher, he wouldnât have attended Briarcrest, wouldnât have been able to play high school football (Iâm not sure how he was eligible to play as a freshman, sophomore or junior as his grades were so terrible).
So was it better for Oher to have been exploited or ignored?
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I never understand why someone would portray the rescue of one child as a bad thing, because so many others are not rescued, itâs not a binary choice. It is likely that the author of this hasnât rescued a child from poverty, and I would suspect that most of us havenât. This seems hypercritical.
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NCAA rules did prohibit many things as you described to prevent schools from providing impermissible benefits to recruits.
But I can promise you that every school in the SEC, some much more than others, violated those rules routinely, and were able to achieve eligibility for any athlete they really wanted. If you didnât grow up in this culture of football obsession, you probably couldnât understand it or believe it. Michael Oher would have played college football with or without the Tuohys, Hugh Freezeâs clearly biased protestations aside.
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No, the colleges canât change eligibility for a kid with a .76 GPA. No college coach can, no college administrator can.
Where the cheating happens is when the kid is in HSâŠwhere others can do the kidâs schoolwork, retake online classes, take the SAT/ACT test for them, and things of that nature. That still happens today tooâŠbut the eligibility rules are more lax now (with test optional, although of course not all schools are test optional).
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Sounds like a job for a big time booster and a willing high school coach and school.
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My daughter comes home for two nights next week from vacation with her bf family. I canât wait to sit across the table for her.
Who does Michael Oher get to have a family meal with ?
When are the tuohy family having a meal with the person they apparently tell others about a lot.
To me, thatâs the sad part. Money doesnât replace that bond.
On a different note, journalist Jason Whitlock says Michael actually orchestrated the story in hopes of a sequel so he could cash in. He eviscerated Oher. I wonât link it as itâs a torch job.
Thatâs the issue. Everyone has an opinion - no one knows. But a family, if it ever was, no longer exists in completeness unless all are pulling the wool over our eyes.
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Clearly Michael got lots of remedial help, encouragement, and resources. I do not think any of the information out there is suggesting the Touhyâs, coach, or school did the work.
Quite honestly I am surprised by how many people in this thread are unhappy that Michael had this family reach-out and help him.
Motives aside, it looks like the intervention did have a positive outcome at least so far as college and career options for him. And, according to some of his earlier interviews, he felt the love of a family.
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Yep, like I said the cheating happens (if it does) at the HS level when trying to get initial NCAA eligibility, not the college level. My comment was a direct response to someoneâs post about colleges routinely violating rules, my comment was not about Oher and the Tuohys.
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We donât know about this case - but at a lot of schools tutors and others were doing the work or classes just were non existent - including but certainly not only UNC. Sorry @Sweetgum
Inside UNCâs outrageous academic scandal: athletes took fake classes for 18 years - Vox
It seems that as far as the money goes, there are two completely different stories. Michael says the Touhyâs made millions from this, they say they made very little. Which one is it?
It sounds like this was presented as the perfect fairytale, rags to riches, with a fairytale ending. But of course, life isnât like that. A terribly difficult childhood that haunts you throughout your life, the desire to make oneself as the warrior, not the victim. But blackmailing (if true) and lashing out at people to make them as miserable as you are, doesnât seem the right way to go. Anyone can see from Michaels earlier book that he knew it was a conservatorship, and so what if it was, anyways?
This just seems like a sad case of someone who has problems that he hasnât resolved in his life. Trying to sell a new book, with a different story. If he didnât want to be known as the victim who was saved, and heâs responsible for his own life, why not let it go, instead of reminding people of this all over again? The movie was made quite some time ago. Unless heâs just drumming up publicity for his new book?
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I have a child âadopted out of poverty.â Never have I thought I rescued her. I adopted her because I wanted her. Do I think her life is better than it would have been had I not adopted her? Yes. Did she lose a lot being adopted? Yes. I will take credit for saving her teeth as they were rotting in her mouth, and now she has beautiful teeth. She was also a Div 2 athlete. I didnât adopt her so she could be an athlete.
I donât think the Tuohys had this big plan to fake adopt him and get him to play at Ole Miss. There just isnât enough time in the timeline. Through his junior year, he was living with other people and his mother. He turned 18 in May 2004, moved in with the Tuohys, then they filed the conservatorship about three months later, recruiting started and he signed his NLI sometime in the spring, either first week of Feb 2005 or after April 1 as those were the rules in 2005.
Michael Lewisâ book was published in Sept 2006. I donât think the Tuohys thought âhey, lets get this kid into our house and have a book written and then turn that into a movie and weâll be famous.â I do think they knew in May 2004 that if he moved in and they wanted him to go to Ole Miss (which they did) theyâd have to move quickly to get him academically qualified, establish a familial relationship the NCAA would accept (and I canât believe the conservatorship worked to do that since anyone can be a conservator and it doesnât have to be a family member), and get him off to college.
The book and the movie werenât planned before he moved in. Should they have talked to him more about it before they signed the contract? Maybe, but the book wasnât just about him. Did they underestimate the success of the book/movie? It appears they did. Not the first time thatâs happened.
Oh, there is plenty of cheating going on in colleges by athletes. Others taking tests or writing papers or other misdeeds. But until they get to college the cheating is happening at the hs level. I still canât figure out how he was elible to play with a .77 gpa.
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Jason Whitlock does whatever he can to create controversy. He insults people constantly, is often having to issue apologies that of course always fall short and is a regular guest of Tucker Carlson. He immerses himself in racial stereotypes. No thanks.
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Was unaware. Just remember he was on ESPN or fox sports. Thx
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