re: Ole Miss folks ... were the Tuohy's "blindsided" by Jussie Oher?

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I've heard many Memphis area HS coaches say Oher was a well-known prospect long before the Touhys got to him.

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Like Rumors? Any proof?

Here is a story from the New York Times Magazine LINK from 2006:

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As he drove into Memphis in March 2004, Tom Lemming thought that everything about Michael Oher, including his surname, was odd. He played for a small private school, the Briarcrest Christian School, with no history of generating Division I college football talent. The Briarcrest Christian School team didn't have many black players either, and Michael Oher was black. But what made Michael Oher especially peculiar was that no one in Memphis had anything to say about him. Lemming had plenty of experience "discovering" great players. Each year he drove 50,000 to 60,000 miles and met, and grilled, between 1,500 and 2,000 high-school juniors while selecting All-American teams for ESPN and College Sports TV. He got inside their heads months before the college recruiters were allowed to shake their hands. Lemming had made some calls and found that the coaches in and around Memphis either didn't know who Michael Oher was or didn't think he was any good. He hadn't made so much as the third-string all-city team. He hadn't had his name or picture in any newspaper. Had Lemming Googled him, "Oher" would have yielded nothing on Michael. The only proof of his existence was a grainy videotape some coach had sent him out of the blue.

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The problem there, at first, resembled his problems in the classroom. He had no foundation, no idea what he was meant to do as a member of a team. He said he had played football his freshman year at Westwood, but there was no sign of it in his performance. When Freeze saw how fast he could move, he pegged him as a defensive tackle. And so for the first six games of the 2003 season, he played defense. He wasn't any worse than his replacement, but he wasn't much better either.

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He started living with the Tuohy's before he was even playing football for Briarcrest. He didn't even become the big prospect until the year after.

He didn’t start living with them until after he was at Briarcrest. They helped get him in but he was living with 4 other families.


Briarcrest didn’t have many black students but they had Greg Hardy and Oher on the same team.

The Touhys didn’t take him in until he got good. He was good as an 11th grader.

New York Times article lmao. One of the worst news sources out there

And since you know so much when did he start living with the Touhys?? It wasn’t the 10th grade

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I can't stand the Tuohys types. We've got plenty from here in Northwest Arkansas, and their favorite fake Christian son employs the Tuohy's son at UCF.

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Are you mocking the other poster here? Because this makes the Tuohys seem totally not fake in any way.

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You seem to have an agenda.

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What is my agenda?

Where have I been wrong in this thread?

Thanks Harry. Moved in with them after he became a big time prospect (spent time in other Briarcrest houses before that). His OL coach was one of the reasons he wanted to go to Memphis. His top two were TN and Memphis until the people that “adopted him” gave him a brand new ride and plenty of money to spend