An Oscar-winning film re-entered the public spotlight more than a decade after it was released when its real-life subjects became tied up in a concerning legal rift this week.
Former NFL offensive tackle and Ole Miss standout Michael Oher — the subject of the 2009 movie “The Blind Side” — alleged Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, a wealthy Memphis couple, lied about adopting him and tricked him into agreeing to a conservatorship, according to a court filing.
Here’s a refresher on Oher and the family’s connections, and how they got here.
2002-04: Oher, who had alternated between foster care and periods of homeless throughout his childhood and early teen years, was attending Briarcrest Christian School — where the football team was then coached by Hugh Freeze (now the coach at Auburn). According to the telling by Michael Lewis, the author of the book on which the movie is based, Oher had been enrolled in 11 different institutions in his first nine years of school. His academic record was abysmal. When he was ultimately allowed to enroll at Briarcrest, he was not allowed to play on the football or basketball teams as he tried to get his academics up to speed.
Sean Tuohy, who is White, first noticed Oher, who is Black, sitting in the stands at a basketball practice, and initially just offered him lunch money. But during Thanksgiving break that year, Sean and his wife, Leigh Anne, encountered Oher wearing his usual cutoff shorts and a t-shirt out in the cold, trying to seek warmth back at the basketball gym. That meeting led to Leigh Anne buying him clothes.
Oher failed his freshman year classes and wasn’t allowed to play sports the whole year, but by the end of his sophomore year, he joined the basketball and track and field teams. In his junior year, he was finally allowed to play football. He started the school year spending nights with “at least five” Briarcrest families, including the Tuohys. Eventually, Leigh Anne decided Oher would move in with her family.
Oher’s sheer size on the football field began drawing interest from college coaches. But he was still raw. Freeze had first played Oher on defense, then moved him to right tackle, and eventually left tackle after an impressive showing at spring practices that year.
2005: Realizing he would need to significantly improve his grades in order to play college football, Leigh Anne enlisted a friend — a former longtime teacher — to tutor Oher 20 hours per week. His senior year, Oher got all A’s and B’s, but it still wasn’t enough to boost his GPA to what it needed to be. Oher enrolled in online courses that allowed him to replace classes with poor grades on his high school transcript — and it worked.
When Oher was 18, the Tuohys made the legal decision at the center of the current dispute. Oher says he believed they adopted him when in reality they placed him under a conservatorship. If the Tuohys had adopted Oher, the family wouldn’t have had the legal rights to make decisions for him once he turned 18 since he would be a legal adult. But in a conservatorship, the conservator controls the financial decisions for the ward.
Oher, after some back and forth, was admitted to Ole Miss. During the process, the NCAA investigated a suspicion that the Tuohys had become Oher’s guardians and put him into their wills just so that he could play for their alma mater, but he was ultimately deemed eligible to play for the Rebels.
He also received scholarship offers from Tennessee, LSU, Alabama, Auburn and South Carolina. Oher was named a first-team freshman All-American, starting at guard before moving to left tackle. He played four seasons at Mississippi, becoming a unanimous All-American as a senior, then was selected by the Baltimore Ravens with the 23rd pick in the 2009 NFL Draft.
2006: Lewis’ book, “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” is published. It chronicles Oher’s story amid a larger look at how football strategy had evolved since the 1980s and increased the importance of the left tackle position.
2009: The book was adapted and released as a feature film, “The Blind Side.” Quinton Aaron stars as Oher, Sandra Bullock — who won the 2010 Best Actress Oscar for the role — plays Leigh Anne and Tim McGraw plays Sean. The film reportedly grossed more than $300 million.
2009-2016: Oher spent eight seasons in the NFL, winning Super Bowl XLVII with Baltimore before stints with the Tennessee Titans and Carolina Panthers. He started 110 games. Oher earned $34.5 million while in the NFL, per Spotrac.
Ronald Martinez / Getty Images
Aug. 14, 2023: Oher, now 37, alleged Sean and Leigh Anne lied about adopting him and tricked him into agreeing to a conservatorship, according to a filing in Shelby County, Tenn., probate court.
The 14-page petition said the Tuohys never took legal action to assume custody of Oher while he was a minor. Months after Oher had turned 18, however, the couple presented him with what he understood to be adoption papers, which in reality was paperwork to make them his conservators, according to the filing. The conservatorship was filed in August 2004, according to the petition, and gave the Tuohys legal authority over Oher’s business deals.
The petition also claims the Tuohys negotiated a deal with Twentieth Century Fox that secured them and their two birth children $225,000 each, plus 2.5 percent of “defined net proceeds” from “The Blind Side.”
The petition said a separate contract purportedly signed by Oher in 2007 “appears to give away to Fox, without any payment whatsoever” the life rights to his story. Oher claims he has no memory of signing such a document, according to the filing.
Oher petitioned the court to end the conservatorship and seeks an injunction to prohibit the Tuohys from using his name, image and likeness, in addition to compensatory and punitive damages.
GO DEEPER
Explaining the conservatorship that Michael Oher alleges Tuohys tricked him into
Sean told The Daily Memphian that his family is “devastated” by Oher’s allegations and that they “didn’t make any money off the movie.” He said the family only earned money from a share of the proceeds of Lewis’ book.
Aug. 15, 2023: The Tuohy family’s attorney Marty Singer called Oher’s claims “hurtful and absurd,” and accused Oher of having tried to “run this play several times before” in a statement to multiple outlets.
“The Tuohys will always care deeply for Mr. Oher. They are heartbroken over these events,” Singer’s statement read. “They desperately hope that he comes to regret his recent decisions, makes different choices in the future and that they someday can be reconciled with him.”
Aug. 16, 2023: Lewis, a childhood friend of Sean’s, told The Washington Post that no one chronicled in his book made millions off of the movie adaptation.
“Everybody should be mad at the Hollywood studio system,” Lewis said. “Michael Oher should join the writers’ strike. It’s outrageous how Hollywood accounting works, but the money is not in the Tuohys’ pockets.”
Lewis, also the author of bestsellers-turned-films “Moneyball” and “The Big Short” alleged that he and the Tuohy family received around $350,000 each from the profits of the movie after agent fees and taxes. He told The Post that the Tuohys “planned to share the royalties among the family members, including Oher, but Oher began declining his royalty checks.” Lewis added that “he believed the Tuohy family had deposited Oher’s share in a trust fund for Oher’s son.”
Aug. 16, 2023: Sean and Leigh Anne intend to end their conservatorship over Oher, their lawyers said at a news conference. Lawyer Randall Fishman said the Tuohys plan to enter into a consent order to end the conservatorship.
“Michael got every dime, every dime he had coming,” Fishman said, per USA Today.
Fishman said the family chose a conservatorship because it helped lessen the NCAA’s concerns that they were steering Oher to Ole Miss.
Aug. 17, 2023: Freeze said he loves Oher and the Tuohy family and believes “the facts will come out” regarding their public dispute.
“I think it’s sad. I certainly don’t claim to understand all the ins and outs of adoption, conservatory, all of that. I know what I witnessed,” Freeze said. “I witnessed a family that totally took in a young man and I think without that, there is no story.”
After coaching Oher at Briarcrest, Freeze became an assistant coach at Ole Miss when Oher played for the Rebels. Freeze later became Ole Miss’ head coach from 2012 to 2016.
“I know this: If Michael called Sean right now and said let’s work this thing out, Sean and Leigh Anne would be there in a hurry to hug his neck and tell him he’s loved,” Freeze said. “I hope he feels that. Until you walk in people’s shoes, I don’t claim to have all the answers to anything, but I think whatever happens will happen. The facts will come out. But I love both sides of it.”
“Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy did something that probably most families, a lot of us talk about doing things, they actually put the shoes on and pulled the boots up and got in the arena and did something,” Freeze said, “and I think that’s admirable.”
(Top photo: Jeff Zelevansky / Getty Images)
