First, a correction to my prior post - Leigh Anne Touhy (the mother), was an Ol’ Miss cheerleader, not a regular athlete.
Both Touhy parents went to Ol’ Miss, as did their daughter, but not their biological son - he went to a smaller school and was an athlete there (maybe not good enough for athletics in his preferred sport at Ol’ Miss?)
While it might be natural to question why Oher went to Ol’ Miss rather than Tennessee or another school (aside from the Touhy connection, of course), in fact Ol’ Miss is closer to their home of Memphis than Tennesse, or as far as I can tell, any other major college football program. For a kid with thin roots, staying close to those he WAS close to, in Memphis, seems logical even if there wasn’t such a strong connection of the Touhys to Ol’ Miss.
Finally, per Wikipedia (which, in turn sources the Blind Side, I think), Oher’s GPA in HS was initially 0.76. Yes, it took some extraordinary effort to get him up to NCAA minimums. Obviously, there were some extraordinary/challenging circumstances in his life, so a 0.76 GPA (initially) by him should not be read in the worst possible light. But then, he wasn’t exactly cruising toward an academic merit scholarship, either.
The Tuohy’s aren’t just former Ole Miss students or athletes, they are big time, big money boosters. They give so much money and are so connected that they have their name on a building; the Tuohy Basketball Center.
The conservatorship wasn’t about love or making him a member of the family as Oher thought (and the movie portrayed.) It was about masking NCAA rules violations so they could get him to Ole Miss. That’s what big time boosters do.
Indeed. But where would Oher be today if they hadn’t taken him into their family, given him a place to live, and provided him with the support and tutoring needed to get his GPA up to NCAA minimums? You seem to strongly disapprove of accepting charity from rich people (who inevitably are self-interested, at least to some extent), even if all the alternatives are worse.
I’m not opposed to “accepting charity.” Michael Oher was just trying to navigate life, and he obviously trusted the Tuohy’s. I’m just not sure the Tuohy’s are the selfless heroes that they’ve made themselves out to be. And I find it unfortunate that the rich white saviors are always portrayed as the heroes of these stories, as opposed to the kid who actually worked hard and succeeded.
I’m not a booster so I have no idea. Bragging rights, maybe? A building with their name on it? A feeling of being part of something larger than themselves? A sense of power and prestige?
Ask the Tuohy’s. They are the ones who determined that they had to have Oher sign his rights away in order for them to steer clear of problems with the NCAA.
When he was being recruited in junior/sr year of HS (2003/4 or so) he was living with the Tuohys and was not a family member. Tuohys were Ole Miss alumni, donors, and boosters (but the basketball building had not yet been built, that was in 2010).
When there are boosters closely involved with a recruit, there can be NCAA infractions because the boosters are providing $, shelter, etc. to the potential recruit…this was the impetus for the Tuohy’s making Oher a part of the family, and they did that via a conservatorship (which isn’t clear why they chose that path, at least to me).
In the dark days of NCAA (1970-20xx) school boosters were ‘buying’ high school kids for their teams. Car dealers were giving cars to top recruits, giving them no-show jobs (cash), providing housing for their parents. The rules became pretty strict after the SMU death penalty. Boosters couldn’t give them anything, including real jobs, clothing, cars, a place to live even if it was a high school kid who really needed it. There were a few cases were athletes were ‘taken in’ by their coaches in order for them to play in a certain hs district or if they parents had to move OOS for a new job, and that wasn’t allowed either if the coach/family was deemed a booster by the NCAA.
The SMU scandal brought this all to light but it was happening everywhere. USC rented a house for Reggie Bush’s family and he lost his Heisman because of it. Basketball coaches were making millions off shoe companies and the shoe companies were paying hs basketball players and steering them to certain schools.
Now with NIL (name, image, likeness) most of this stuff is legal. The car dealerships can pay the new college student (usually isn’t allowed to still play in hs sports, although one top hs QB gave up his senior year to sign NIL contracts) to endorse a car, sign a contract with a shoe company, ticktok deals, etc. Who is to say their endorsement isn’t worth $100 grand? Olivia Dunn, a gymnast at LSU, makes over a million $$ a year on endorsement deals and I’ve seen her on TV commercials too.
I don’t think there is any question that the hs wanted Michael for his athletic ability and that’s why they gave him financial aid to attend the hs. It was a long commute for Michael so he started staying with his friends and then the Tuohys asked him to stay for his final year. Because the Tuohys were boosters, they needed to make him a legal family member if they/he wanted him to go to Ole Miss, and they could do that by conservatorship quickly. Why not a guardianship? He was over 18 and if allowed that may have required social worker home visits, scheduling a court hearing, etc. (time). Conservatorship was quick. He turned 18 in May before his senior year. It seems he started staying with the Tuohys about that time. Recruiting would have been in full swing. At the time, football signing day was in February. He also needed to take the remedial courses at BYU which were probably done that summer (or maybe the summers before and after senior year). He needed to take the ACT/SAT. He needed to start the NCAA clearinghouse process. Time was moving quickly. I don’t think anyone is claiming the conservatorship was for anything other than the NCAA booster rules. Maybe Michael didn’t understand it but it seem unlikely that even a naive 18 year old would think a family would adopt him after him living with them for 3 months. He knew the foster care system much better than they did as he’d lived in it his entire life.
The suit Oher filed (maybe really a petition?) is to dismiss the conservatorship and for an accounting of his money. The Tuohys may not even object to it.
Last night I was talking to a friend about this. Her first husband died when her kids were about 3 and 5. She got married again a couple of year later so her kids spent most their lives with her new husband. I asked if he adopted them. No. I asked what they called him. Dad. Did they ever think that he wasn’t their father or that they weren’t a family even though it wasn’t a legal relationship? No. Did he call them ‘his kids’ on social media? Yes.
I have no doubt the intent of this week’s announcement is for this book to sell better than the first and bad buzz is always better than no buzz at all to drum up interest and thus sales. My hunch is it was well planned as the digital footprint was also attended to ahead of time. For instance his (Michael Oher) name was scrubbed from his stepdaughter’s athlete profile on the Belmont Track & Field website (Daughter of Tiffany Roy … Has three siblings, Naivi, MJ, and Kobi … Had family members to play college sports at Ole Miss and Bethel University) despite him having raised her essentially from birth, and her linked socials on their site are deactivated.
In that same light, for him to be saying he thought he was adopted also does not feel on the up and up as he knows his birth certificate was never changed (and he’s seen it as recently as last year when he filed for a marriage license) and given he has two step children whom he never adopted and thus knows he is not on their birth certificates, I find it hard to believe he was not well aware of the nuances until Feb of this year.
Micheal Lewis, hardly a “naive 18 year old,” seems to have been fooled. In 2004 he wrote that the NCAA . . .
. . . had opened an investigation and voiced the suspicion that the Tuohys had become Michael’s guardians and put him into their wills as an equal of their own children only so that he might play left tackle for their alma mater.
But they didn’t become his guardian, and they apparently didn’t make him “equal of their own children.” They’d help arrange for him to play at Ole Miss, though.
Oher’s grades rose miraculously at the end of his Jr. year, about the time he became an extremely hot recruit and about the time the Tuohy’s became more involved. But his grades were still not high enough for NCAA elibibility, so Tuohy found a workaround to get grade point up and get him eligible. Michael Lewis referred to it as what he termed “the great Mormon grade-grab:”
The B.Y.U. courses had magical properties: a grade took a mere 10 days to obtain and could be used to replace a grade from an entire semester on a high-school transcript. . . All you had to do in such a “character course” was to read a few brief passages from famous works — a speech by Lou Gehrig here, a letter by Abraham Lincoln there — and then answer five questions about it. How hard could it be? The A’s earned from character courses could be used to replace F’s earned in high-school English classes. And Michael never needed to leave the house!
In other words, another ruse to get around NCAA rules and get him eligible to play for Ole Miss. Doesn’t seem all that important to anyone involved whether he learned anything or not.
More generally, as to the NCAA rules changes, my understanding is that the reason the rules were changed isn’t because the boosters weren’t doing anything wrong, but rather because kids were being used and exploited and weren’t being allowed to share in profits being made off their names and likenesses. Sort of like what Michael Oher is claiming the Tuohy’s did to him.
This is not unique to the NCAA. A friend’s kid had failed AP English in his senior year and would have been unable to graduate HS last June (since you need 4 years of English to graduate). He took a 3 day online grade replacement course that was substituted on his transcript and all was fine.
The Tuohys didn’t invent the BYU program to get students eligible for NCAA teams. Lots of students used the program, but it was expensive and someone had to pay for it. You are right, if they hadn’t paid for it he couldn’t have gone to Ole Miss - or any other NCAA program. He might have been able to go to a jr college (watch Last Chance U) and after a year or two transferred to a D1 program. The gpa/test score requirements had nothing to do with boosters or Ole Miss. They applied to every D1 school and he didn’t qualify at the end of junior year.
Clearly the hs wasn’t helping him get ready for college even though he was a top athlete (both football and basketball). Would you have preferred the Tuohys not get involved, he not be eligible to play D1 football, and thus probably not go to college?
Again, I don’t buy into the notion that benefits received negate any potentially exploitive elements.
I’d prefer a more honest and balanced depiction of what happened, with less back patting and less celebration of the boosters. I understand why Oher might feel like, in retrospect, he is the one who was blindsided by those he thought had his back. As I mentioned above, I am not so sure that the Tuohy’s are the selfless heroes that they’ve made themselves out to be.
That isn’t to say I think Oher has any sort of legal claim for damages.
I’m always appreciative of folks that help me - work, home etc.
Michael Oher went to college, earned $34 mil, lives in Brentwood TN - look up housing costs there. Is starting a foundation and supporting two girls to attend a private, religious school. I, for one, would be appreciative no matter what. Hopefully they weren’t pulling from his salary.
It’s a bummer this came out. B4 we’d not given his situation a thought. It’s sad they all haven’t spoken in ten years, so a few years into his career. Trust obviously isn’t there both ways for whatever reason.
I hope all lead great lives and if they’re truly a family, I hope all somehow re engage their relationship in the future. He has a beautiful family now and wouldn’t it be nice for those kids to know those who - regardless of motives - helped develop / facilitate this man to the person he is today.
It’s very sad. I wish both sides lots of luck and health.
The Tuohy family, wealthy to begin with, seem to have profited from their relationship with Michael. Not so much financially, but with the PR, perks, and good will they have gotten. I don’t think they “adopted” anyone but Michael, despite becoming such advocates for adoption of older kids. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
They didn’t write the book or the movie. Even the movie (I read the book but just don’t remember all the details) shows that it wasn’t an adoptions (it used the term guardianship) and did make the NCAA investigation of the Tuohys being boosters a big part of the movie. It even questioned Miss Sue, the tutor, as being a big Ole Miss fan. I don’t know where the Tuohys were claiming anything that wasn’t true.
I feel if they hadn’t stepped in, he would not have played D1 football. He was a good hs player, but he wasn’t a quarterback or playing for a California school and winning a state championship. He may not have graduated from high school, as he certainly wasn’t on track for that. Is there back patting for his getting through high school and into college? If so, that’s fine as the alternative isn’t pretty. Yep, no book or movie deal, but no college degree or NFL career either without someone helping him.
Christian McCaffrey attended a small(er) christian high school. Do you think he was recruited to Stanford because a coach just happened to hear about him or read about him in a ‘Star of the Week’ spot on the news? I think it had more to do with his parents being Stanford athletes themselves, his hanging out at Bronco training camps since he was two years old, his knowing John Lynch and John Elway and other stanford grads, of his knowing the ropes.
Would you be so concerned about this if Oher had gone to Alabama or S Carolina or Florida and the Tuohys not done the conservatorship? If the Tuohys were only concerned about getting him into Ole Miss, once they had done that they could have just walked away. They remained part of his life for another 10 years.