The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
Book Review: Beyond the Game of Football
Summary: 5 Stars
As both an avid sports fan and reader of sports literature I found this to be by far the most outstanding sports related book I've ever read. (I've read lots of them)
Michael Lewis does a superb job of combining football statistics with human life drama as he chronicles the serendepidous coming together of the Touhy family and Michael Oher and all that follows.
If you love big time college football you'll enjoy reading about recruiting tactics of big time coaches, i.e. Fullmer, Saban, & others.
If you love NFL football you'll enjoy the statistical based reasoned explanation of how the game has evolved & changed over the past couple of decades. Throw in descriptions of personalities about prominent NFL people, i.e. Walsh, Ogden, Wallace, and others and you have a statistical based explanation with a genuine human approach.
Lewis is "Grishamesque" in his treatment of Michael Oher - I'm pulling for Michael to become an all pro left tackle.
Details of Michael's struggles, perserverance and successes brought tears to my eyes. Details of the Touhy family's care and nurturing of Michael reinforced my belief in the good of mankind. The world needs more people like them!!
Michael's final encounter with Antonio Turner caused me to jump to my feet, thrust my fist into the air and say, YES!!!!
This book is an incredible read about life, fate,big time sports and the economic value of highly skilled athletes. It is also about something more - the great economic and cultural divide in this country as evidenced by Urban America in general and Hurt Village and Dixie Homes in particular. Political leaders and public policy makers should read this book - it strikes at the heart of one of our country's greatest challenges in the 21st century - how do we close the gap between the "haves and have nots?"
Book Review: Not football's Moneyball, but a great read nonetheless..
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are looking for the football version of Moneyball you might be a bit disppointed by Blind Side. It's not really that kind of book. (Indeed, there are few books that completely alter one's view of a subject the way Moneyball did) There are some interesting chapters about Bill Walsh and the innovations he brought to the offensive side of football, but Blind Side is much more of a human interest story. It's a highly readable and engaging story and it will surely make you pay more attention next time an Ole Miss game is on TV. I highly recommend it. Book Review: You Will Enjoy It Even If You Don't Love Football
Summary: 5 Stars
Of course, I do love football, and my young son plays on offensive and defensive lines, so the description of the book and its high ranking on the Top 100 list motivated me to purchase and read.
The Blind Side is an interesting, fast read. It combines a remarkable human interest story of a young man, literally from the streets of Memphis, who is currently a sophomore at Ole Miss and headed to NFL fame, with the evolving nature of pro football strategy, both on an off the field.
If you are old enough to remember Joe Theismann's career ending leg injury (I am) you will recognize the opening scenes of the book. The rest of the stories are intertwined and flow with ease through the finish at this current period in time. The "currency" of the book was one of the things I really liked.
I have not read any of Mr. Lewis' other books, but am now looking forward to it.
Book Review: A read.
Summary: 5 Stars
The excerpt in Sports Illustrated sparked my interest in reading this book. I also read part of the New York Times magazine article until I realized, "wait a minute. I'm buying this book." The subtitle "Evolution of a Game" and the X's and O's on the cover indicated that we might get a history of football strategy, explained through Lewis' understanding of markets, and the exploiting of their inefficiencies.
So, I picked it up expecting it to be as football-y as Moneyball was baseball-y. It wasn't. And for the sports fan, those sections were the best and pretty much disappear a third of the way into the book. You can feel the excitement as the high school coach fires his team up to run GAP! every play. You get a great sense of potential of the book's star as he runs a defensive lineman completely off the field of play.
The book focuses on Michael Oher, and the story of his upbringing and subsequent adoption by the Tuouhy family in Memphis. The football strategy parts of the book exist, not on their own merits, but only as the forces that set up the market conditions that Oher finds himself in -- conditions where a person of his size and agility are worth a lot of money to a lot of people. With the Tuouhy's adoption (first informally, and then formally) of Oher, the book moves away from football strategy but remains interesting.
Even though Lewis presents the family's motivations as innocent and altruistic, I could not shake the feeling throughout the book that what was going on was what the NCAA thought was going on -- Ole Miss alums had noticed a kid's potential early on, and pulled every trick in the book to get him into Ole Miss.
I'm not sure if Lewis was attempting to create a real indictment of this family -- I'm sure they won't read it that way -- but they compromise the High school's principles to get Oher in; he performs terribly for years, and then makes it all up in a summer course under the careful eye of a tutor who also follows him to Ole Miss. I not naive enough to believe that his tutor wasn't actually the one who passed the "classes". The patriarch of the family, Sean Tuouhy, berates the NCAA investigator who is just doing her job and does not allow Oher to answer any of her questions. Tuouhy also pulls strings when Oher gets in trouble at Ole Miss.
Perhaps the most tragic character in the book is Oher's brother in the adopted family. As Oher leads on, and lies to, college recruiters, his younger brother starts feeling a little of his own power, and holds it over the recruiters. Like many other things in this book, it's presented as a cutesy anecdote -- the 13 year boy asking the celebrity coach "what's in it for me?" But it comes off as a lot less cutesy when reflected by a passage near the end of the book. After years of exposure to the system, the boy asks his mom one day, (paraphrasing), "since Michael is going to be rich, and my sister is going to marry a rich guy, shouldn't I get all of your inheritance."
Another reviewer states, ". . .it enriched the lives of their family. . .". I think it remains to be seen just what kind of "enrichment" we might be talking about.
As explained in the author's note, Lewis is a friend of the Tuouhy's. I think it hurts him in this book. He glosses over events like a truck accident that Oher was involved in. When Oher accepts trips to college campuses even after deciding where he wants to go, Lewis writes this off as the innocent young kid having fun. Yet, if Lewis really wanted to protect these people, would he have left in the quote where Oher says he's going to buy his 13 brothers and sisters a house, and then recants because he felt he made it on his own, even though all evidence indicates otherwise?
Another reviewer stated "his adoptive parents and coaches seem angelic compared to the NCAA in this story." I would ask this reviewer why Oher wasn't adopted by the Tuouhy's until they realized that the gifts they had bestowed upon him wouldn't look so suspicious if he was their son.
Don't read my indictment of some of the personalities as an indictment of the book. I am not sure if Lewis was trying to protect the family, and failed or whether his intent was to cleverly expose the seedy side of big time college athletics at the expense of his friends. Either way, I found this to be an fascinating book.
I just would have liked to have seen more focus on the football.
Book Review: Excellent read
Summary: 5 Stars
I found the book to be an excellent read. Some very interesting football insights, including emerging offensive strategies, the increasing importance of the left tackle position, and the horrendous college football recruitment methods that currently exist. These are all interspersed within the story of Michael Oher, a gifted athlete , who manages, with much help, to emerge from the Memphis ghetto to become a potential superstar.