{"id":1704,"date":"2016-06-29T14:07:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T21:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1704"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:30:59","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:30:59","slug":"review-the-blind-side-evolution-of-a-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/29\/review-the-blind-side-evolution-of-a-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\n The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game<\/a> by Michael Lewis<\/a>
\n My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

A friend gave me a big stack of books a while ago and Moneyball<\/em> was one of them. I eventually got around to reading it and my one regret was not reading it a lot sooner. I immediately went to my local library\u2019s website and said \u201cGimme everything you got by this Michael Lewis guy.\u201d They finally gave me The Blind Side<\/em> a few days ago.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s fair, but a bit shallow, to say that The Blind Side<\/em> is a football version of Moneyball<\/em>. This time around, Lewis uses \u201cnew football\u201d (my phrase) to contextualize a short biography of Michael Oher; in Moneyball<\/em>, Billy Beane\u2019s story was just one part of a new way to look at baseball. But there are plenty of other parallels. There\u2019s another Bay Area guy named Bill finding ways to win with meager resources. There\u2019s an underlying tone of an established old-boys network resistant to the new way of doing things. There\u2019s even an unsung hero who gets things going with a well-researched newsletter.<\/p>\n

And through it all, of course, there’s that Lewis story-telling style, part journalism, part fairy-tale. It\u2019s a compelling style, very readable, as likely to drop an F-bomb as to quote Friedrich Engels. And not given, in my opinion, to too much proselytizing or judgement.<\/p>\n

That said, I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t offer my my own opinions. So let\u2019s say the \u201creview\u201d part of this post is over, and now I\u2019m going to editorialize a bit.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been of the notion that modern American athletics can be likened to slavery, whether it\u2019s unpaid college athletes and the billions of dollars their universities earn, or, even worse, a \u201cfarm\u201d system that keeps kids poor so that opportunities in athletics come to be their only hope for success. Michael Lewis writes, \u201cThe inner city of Memphis alone teemed with kids whose athletic ability had market value.\u201d As soon as I read that, my notion was reinforced. <\/p>\n

“The Blind Side” is a nickname for where the right tackle comes at a passing quarterback, and a metaphor from where Michael Oher himself came before earning his well-deserved reputation as a gifted athlete. But don\u2019t we sports fan stay willfully blind, protected by rationalization (\u201cThese athletes make more money than I do!\u201d) and are thus able to ignore the truly terrible lives led by those who DON\u2019T become professionals? Why do we give a few men billions of dollars when we could be giving thousands of poor children something decent to live off of?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t doubt that the real hero of this story, Oher\u2019s adoptive mother Leigh Anne Tuohy, had only pure intentions when she took Michael in. More people like that in the world, and we\u2019ll all be better for it. But until we do have more people like that, there\u2019s always going be a part of me that feels guilty when I watch sports.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis My rating: 3 of 5 stars A friend gave me a big stack of books a while ago and Moneyball was one of them. I eventually got around to reading it and my one regret was not reading it a lot sooner. I immediately went … <\/p>\n

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