Coming to grips with a grudge 😡

Rule No. 1 of Grudgery: The thing that we end up fighting over is not necessarily what caused our grudge.

In fact, what ends up triggering the anger is often significantly downwind from what prompted the hard feelings in the first place.

To put it in a doctor’s terminology, there is a pronounced tendency to fixate on the symptoms as opposed to addressing the underlying condition when treating a grudge.

Here, I’ve got a good example involving someone whose life is close to being the complete and total opposite of mine. He’s 6 foot 5, Black and a former professional athlete who grew up in Memphis. I’m the guy who wasn’t even 5 feet tall at age 15, I’m white and I grew up in the feral half of Oregon.

There is one way, however, in which I feel like a kindred spirit to Michael Oher: He’s got a grudge.

This is certainly not the ending of either the best-selling book nor the award-winning movie that purported to tell his story.

In fact, that movie seems to be one of the things that has led Oher to feel that he has been wronged by the Memphis family that took him in back when he was in high school.

Oher is now suing that family, which is very sad on several levels, but mostly because this seemed to be a story that everyone could feel good about.

Oher, who grew up poor in Tennessee, had become eligible to play college football where he was such a force of nature on the football field that he went on to make millions of dollars in the NFL.

The Tuohys, a white, well-off family in Memphis, who had taken Oher in, providing with a home, use of a truck and tutoring. Their generosity had opened doors for Oher that might have stayed shut.

Sandra Bullock even won an Oscar when it was all said and done.

But as with many stories involving race in America — especially those that come to generate millions of dollars — it wound up getting a lot more complicated.

The backstory

Oher grew up in Memphis as one of his mother’s 11 children. She suffered from issues of substance abuse. He attended a variety of schools and was at times unhoused before coming to Briarcrest Christian where he became one of the top football prospects in the state of Tennessee.

At some point in Oher’s final two years of high school, he came to live with Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, whose daughter attended the same school as Michael. They also had a younger son. They not only took Oher in, but helped him make up the ground academically to become eligible to accept a college scholarship to play football. He went to Ole Miss, which is where the Tuohys had both attended.

Even now, Oher looks back very fondly at his time with the Tuohys:

That quote is included in a profile of Oher published in the New York Times Magazine earlier this month.

At some point during Oher’s time living with the Tuohys, one of the country’s most prominent non-fiction authors became interested in this story.

The author is Michael Lewis, whose previous book — “Moneyball” — detailed how the Oakland A’s and their general manager Billy Beane hacked baseball. The book changed the way people not only judged the performance of baseball players, but provided a framework for identifying things that were undervalued in a marketplace.

Michael Lewis is a childhood friend of Sean Tuohy, the two having attended a private school together while growing up in New Orleans.

Lewid decided to write a book, which is essentially wove together two stories:

1. How important left tackles had become to modern professional football, and therefore how lucrative the position had become;

2. How Oher possessed the rare physical gifts required of these ultra-valuable left tackles, but after growing up very poor in Memphis, he very nearly fell through the cracks and would not have been eligible to play college football let alone the NFL were it not for the help of the Tuohys.

The book was published in 2006 when Oher was in his second year at Ole Miss. I was covering the NFL when the book was published. In fact, while I was at The Seattle Times, I hosted a Live Chat in which Lewis answered reader questions about the book.

I also spoke with Oher back in 2009 when he was preparing for the draft. Well, me and a couple of hundred other reporters who had flown to Indianapolis to see the top 250 or so college football players audition for NFL teams.

One of the things the aspiring pro football players must do at what is honestly a meat market is subject themselves to questions from the assembled press. When he was asked about the book, Oher said he had not read it. I thought this was odd, but also somewhat understandable as players routinely insist they do not read the accounts and descriptions that reporters offer of their performance. Here’s the story I wrote for The Seattle Times.

Oher was chosen in the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft, the No. 23 pick overall. He was the fourth offensive tackle chosen in that year’s draft.

The movie version of “The Blind Side” was released in November 2009, which was in the middle of Oher’s first season in the NFL. The movie turned out to be much more of a commercial success than the book. The film’s budget has been pegged at being just shy of $30 million, the gross receipts more than $300 million. Bullock, who played Leigh Anne Tuohy, won an Oscar for Best Actress. Country star Tim McGraw played Sean Tuohy.

Oher had a very good, but not great NFL career. He played for eight years, which is more than double the length of the average player’s career and longer than two of the three offensive tackles who were drafted ahead of Oher.

As a member of the 2012 Ravens team, he won a Super Bowl ring. However, he was never was chosen for the Pro Bowl, meaning he was never seen as being one of the five or six best players at his position. Oher retired in 2016, having earned more than $30 million in his career. 

By then, Oher had come to see the year he spent with the Tuohys and everything that followed much differently.

The friction

Oher feels the movie portrayed him as being unintelligent. He believes this portrayal influenced not just the way NFL teams saw him, but the way people see him now. 

Having seen the film, I understand why he would feel that way. His character doesn’t say all that much in the movie. He stands around, looks very big and does what he’s told. There’s also a scene where Tuohy’s son – who is purportedly 10 at the time -- uses condiment bottles to explain football to Oher. This is absurd given that Oher was named to the Memphis paper’s All-Metro football team when he was a junior, which is before he moved in with the Tuohys.

The movie is — unambiguously — a story about Oher’s white saviors, whose generosity and determination paved the way for a young Black man who was enormous physically, gifted athletically, but otherwise entirely passive in this journey from poverty to wealth.

None of this is necessarily the Tuohy’s fault, though. They didn’t make the movie nor did they write the book it was based upon. Hollywood is known to take some liberties.

This is where it gets complicated, though. The book, remember, was written by Sean’s childhood friend (and I would argue that out of everyone in this story, Lewis’s shortcomings are the easiest to explicitly spell out. In fact, why don’t I just go ahead and do that:

The recent New York Times Magazine story also pointed out something I didn’t know: The movie was produced by Alcon Entertainment, whose primary shareholder is a man named Fred Smith. Fred Smith is the founder of Fed Ex. He — like the Tuohys — lives in Memphis. His son, Cannon, married the Tuohy’s daughter, Collins.

You can start to see why Oher might start to have some hard feelings about why the story was told the way it was.

Bullock spent time around Leigh Anne Tuohy so she could get a sense for who she was portraying; Oher didn’t meet the actor who played him until after the movie was shot. In fact, the actor said it was suggested that meeting Oher might be counterproductive given how much he’d changed since he was the high-schooler living with the Tuohys.

 In retrospect, when Oher said he hadn’t read “The Blind Side” back at the scouting combine in 2009, it was a sign he didn’t see it as being truly his story. This feeling was compounded significantly by the way he was portrayed in the movie that came out later that year.

The lawsuit

Last year, when Oher filed a lawsuit against the Tuohys, he requested the following:

• An end to the conservatorship that was established when he was 18;

• Money Oher believes he should have earned from the film and a thorough accounting of the proceeds;

• An injunction to prevent Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy from using his name, image and likeness.

The suit also points out that the family claimed repeatedly to have adopted Oher, both privately and publicly, which was not in fact the case. The suit also states the Tuohys raised $8 million using Oher’s name, image and likeness, claiming to have adopted him, when they did not in fact do that.

The Tuohys have said Oher has sent them threatening text messages that amount to extortion.

The case – which was filed in Tennessee – has a hearing scheduled for Oct. 1.

The legal fight

The conservatorship has already been ended by the court, the Tuohys stating in a court filing it was only created to avoid any questions regarding Oher’s eligibility to play NCAA football. They stated the conservatorship was never used to influence or limit any of Oher’s decisions.

In a court filing, the Tuohys said Oher was paid $138,000 from the movie, disputing his allegation that he didn’t receive his share of the proceeds of the movie. The producers of the film have also disclosed what they say are the financial disbursements.

Then there’s the issue of a formal adoption. Sean Tuohy initially said that Oher was too old to be formally adopted, having already turned 18. In Tennessee, however, like more than 20 states, you can formally adopt someone who is legally an adult. The Tuohys have said in court filings that while they referred to Oher as their adopted son, they meant it in a colloquial sense rather than a strictly legal one.

I possess neither the first-hand knowledge of this situation nor the legal expertise to provide any meaningful assessment on what could or should happen in court.

Honestly, I’m not really interested in the outcome of the lawsuit except for how it relates to the grudge that Oher holds.

I can absolutely understand why Oher is angry. His story was told in pretty much the most dramatic fashion possible in a way he feels minimized him and glorified the Tuohys. He believes this portrayal had a negative impact on his career and has been an unambiguous positive for them.

As the lawsuit makes clear, he feels that the family called him his son, but didn’t really mean it.

I’m not sure the lawsuit will provide a remedy for any of that, though, given that it’s mostly about accounting, contracts and which specific method was used to incorporate Oher into the family.

Remember how I started this newsletter? The thing that we end up fighting over is not necessarily what caused our grudge. I think that very much applies here.

While Oher may be unhappy, maybe even angry about the financial payouts from the film and the legal agreement tying him to the Tuohys, the grudge is about something much deeper and it sure seems Oher is trying to find a way to achieve some closure.

I suppose it’s possible the lawsuit could be a path toward that.

Perhaps a judgment or even a settlement could ease Oher’s anger and bitterness over how it played out.

Maybe the act of filing the lawsuit — and the opportunity that provides him to tell his side of the story — makes him feel heard and seen. The fact he agreed to the magazine profile shows he is interested in sharing what he believes occurred. 

However, it’s also possible that the anger and resentment he feels will continue to boil even after the court case is resolved. This might be true even if Oher technically wins. After all, you can’t undo the movie any more than you can pound out the impression it made on people.

If he loses, well, it will probably only compound the sense of grievance he feels.

Then again, what else can he do?

It’s tempting to just say he should move on because dwelling in the past will only make you more miserable. After all, Oher is in his 30s now with a wife and five children. He told the New York Times he’s secure financially, he has money saved.

There are some people who would even describe it as irrational to keep focusing on the past. After all, it’s not going to do him any good. However, this is a view that reflects a classical economist’s understanding of human nature, which holds that humans will generally do what is most beneficial to them. If we fail to do this, it’s a reflection of a flaw in our decision-making or (worse) our personality.

This is not true, however. We constantly choose things we know are not in our own best self-interest whether it’s wolfing down sugary snacks or vegging out on reality television.

And sometimes, we’ll sit and stew over an injustice that occurred many years ago inflicted by someone we no longer associate with. As much as we’d prefer to stop ruminating over this, we can’t seem to help it.

What do we do then? Well, perhaps you spend years imaginging a confrontation in which you finally tell that person what you think like I did with my stepfather. Or maybe you file a lawsuit that will provide some concrete way to address your grievances.

Honestly, I’m hoping that however that lawsuit turns out, it helps Oher find some closure. I’m doubtful, however, and I say that based on my own personal experience. Closure was something I had to find within myself.