Monday, September 25, 2006
Thumbs up...
To Michael Lewis' "The Blind Side"
I read the new Michael Lewis book this weekend because I had an advance reader's edition. (Like Big Thunder, I'm kinda a 'big deal.') Large portions of the book are available in SI and The New York Times Magazine, and the full hardcover version will be in stores next week, I think. Anyway, The Blind Side is well-written, interesting, and able to be read in one weekend, provided you plan to be killing four to eight hours in airports (curse you, Continental!). It includes two interwoven story lines: the rise of the left tackle in professional football, and the rise of one young left tackle prospect, Michael Oher, now of Ole Miss.
This is not Moneyball. While Lewis' chapters about Lawrence Taylor and Bill Walsh make a nice case for certain evolutionary shifts in the NFL, they make up a relatively small part of the book. And the basic premise -- that nasty pass rushers like Taylor made athletic, long-armed, big-handed, 350-pound left tackles like Oher prized commodities -- is not new to anyone who follows the NFL draft. The compelling part of this book is Oher's story. The normal descriptors about poverty and broken homes don't seem to come close to capturing the life that Oher lived for his first 15 years. But with a loving adoptive family, dogged tutoring, a self-interested high school football coach, and a few other key ingredients, Oher went from being a homeless teenager to being one of the nation's top recruits.
I read the new Michael Lewis book this weekend because I had an advance reader's edition. (Like Big Thunder, I'm kinda a 'big deal.') Large portions of the book are available in SI and The New York Times Magazine, and the full hardcover version will be in stores next week, I think. Anyway, The Blind Side is well-written, interesting, and able to be read in one weekend, provided you plan to be killing four to eight hours in airports (curse you, Continental!). It includes two interwoven story lines: the rise of the left tackle in professional football, and the rise of one young left tackle prospect, Michael Oher, now of Ole Miss.
This is not Moneyball. While Lewis' chapters about Lawrence Taylor and Bill Walsh make a nice case for certain evolutionary shifts in the NFL, they make up a relatively small part of the book. And the basic premise -- that nasty pass rushers like Taylor made athletic, long-armed, big-handed, 350-pound left tackles like Oher prized commodities -- is not new to anyone who follows the NFL draft. The compelling part of this book is Oher's story. The normal descriptors about poverty and broken homes don't seem to come close to capturing the life that Oher lived for his first 15 years. But with a loving adoptive family, dogged tutoring, a self-interested high school football coach, and a few other key ingredients, Oher went from being a homeless teenager to being one of the nation's top recruits.
# posted by Budds @ 2:35 PM 
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The best part is where Oher picks up the defensive end who was talking trash, drives him back 15 yards off the line and dumps him on his home bench. Too bad Ole Miss is never on TV, because I'm curious to see this kid play now.
The book is generally a positive take on Oher's journey, but Lewis details an incident last year in which Oher got into a fight in a team study room and inadvertently knocked over the 3-year-old child of a tutor, who hit the floor and opened up a gash in his head. Oher panicked and ran, the police went looking for him, and the kid's father was talking about pressing charges. The end result: No press coverage and 10 hours of community service. I'm sure the folks at Ole Miss are thrilled that Lewis resurrected this little portion of the Michael Oher story.
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