The Blind Side

Hey, YouBeQB'ers,

I've got a great gift idea for you folks - and considering that it's the day *after* Christmas, my timing couldn't be better.

If you haven't read the book "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game" by Michael Lewis, then I no longer have any respect for you.

You're dead to me, Fredo.

Don't call me at 3am ever again, asking where the money is that you lent me - just forget it.

You really should go buy this book - Michael Lewis is the guy who wrote "Moneyball" and "Liar's Poker" - and "The Blind Side" is better than either of them.

The story inter-cuts history of professional football, talking about how the left-tackle position on the offensive line became one of the highest-paid positions on the field (behind only QB), and why this happened - hence the "evolution of a game".

Finding a possible NFL left-tackle prospect is like striking oil. It's a 'eureka!' moment that doesn't come along very often. Guys that big (> 6;5", > 330 lbs.) are extremely rare. But guys that big who have the foot-speed of a cheetah and the grace of a ballerina are like 1-in-100 million.

So what happens when you find one of those guys wandering the streets, homeless?

The main character in the book is a young man named Michael Oher (pronounced "orr") - a destitute black kid from the worst part of Memphis, Tennessee, who gets transplanted to the richest part of Memphis and plopped down into an evangelical Christian high school.


People who came in contact with Michael in those early years of high school described him as being nearly feral. One teacher said, "He's the poorest person I've ever met in my life, and it has nothing to do with money."

By the time he was a teenager, he didn't know what an ocean was. Never heard of a noun or a verb. Never been to a doctor. Born the son of a crack-addicted mother, he had fended for himself on the streets since he was a toddler.

This is one unbelievable story - and you don't need to be a football fan to be riveted by it. Check it out.


---JohnnyU