The Blind Side by Michael Lewis Read Free Book Online

his girls were ranked ninth in the nation. Freeze was at his desk preparing for the first day of the new school year when his secretary alerted him to the presence of someone who insisted on calling himself “Big Tony.”
In walks this 400-pound black man in a mechanic’s shirt with a little white name tag that says: Big Tony. This huge man introduces himself as Big Tony—again, no last name—and proceeds to tell Hugh about Steven. “He told me about his son, and how he wanted more for him than the school he was at,” said Freeze. “I told him how admirable that was but he had to understand that it cost a lot of money to go to Briarcrest, and not everyone got in. You had to have good grades. Big Tony said he knew about the cost and the grades; but Steven was an honor student and he was able to pay whatever the financial aid didn’t cover.” Freeze gave him the financial aid forms and thought: Good luck. That’s when Tony said, “And Coach, I’ve also got one of Steven’s friends.” He told him about Big Mike, a basketball player who, in Big Tony’s modest opinion, might also be of use to the Briarcrest football team.
“Where are his parents?” asked Freeze. He felt a twinge of interest. If a man who weighed 400 pounds was referring to someone else as “Big Mike,” he’d like to see the size of that someone else.
“It’s a bad deal, Coach,” said Tony. “No Dad, Mom’s in rehab. I’m pretty much all he has.”
“Who is the guardian?” asked Freeze. “Who has legal authority over him?”
“The mom.”
Big Tony said he could get Big Mike’s mom to fill in the forms, then just sat there, a bit uneasily. Finally, he asked, “You want to meet them?”
“The boys are here?”
“Right outside.”
“Sure,” said Freeze, “bring ’em on in.” Tony went out and came back with Steven. Hugh sized him up: almost six feet, and maybe as much as 180 pounds. Plenty big enough for the Briarcrest Christian School Saints football team. “But where’s the other one?” he asked.
“Big Mike! Come on in here!”
Hugh Freeze will never forget the next few seconds. “He just peeks around the corner, with his head down.” Hugh didn’t get a good first look—it was just a sliver of him but it suggested an improbably large whole. Then Michael Oher stepped around the corner and into his office.
Good God! He’s a monster!
The phrase shrieked inside Hugh’s brain. He’d never seen anything remotely like this kid—and he’d coached against players who had gone to the NFL. When football coaches describe their bigger players, they can sound like ranchers discussing a steer. They use words like “girth” and “mass” and “trunk size.” Hugh wasn’t exactly sure of the exact dimensions of Big Mike—six five, 330 pounds? Maybe. Whatever the dimensions, they couldn’t do justice to the effect they created. That mass! That…girth! The kid’s shoulders and ass were as wide as his doorway. And he’d only just turned sixteen.
“How can I get their transcripts?” asked Hugh.
Big Tony said he’d go get them and bring them in person.
Then Hugh tried to make conversation with this man-child. “I couldn’t get him to talk to me,” he said. “Not a word. He was in a shell.”
A few days later, Big Tony delivered the transcripts to Hugh Freeze. Steven, as advertised, was a model student and Briarcrest could see no reason not to supply him with a Christian education. Big Mike was another story. Hugh was a football coach and so he tended to take an indulgent view of bad grades, but he had no pleasant category in his mind for Big Mike’s. “I knew it was too good to be true,” he said. He sat on the transcript for two days, but he knew that eventually he’d have to hand it over to Mr. Simpson, the principal, to pass judgment. But his wheels already were spinning.
Steve Simpson, like John Harrington, was new to Briarcrest. He’d spent thirty of his fifty-six years working in the Memphis Public School