From Memphis Streets to Super Bowl Champion

Michael Oher was born in 1986 in Memphis, Tennessee, one of twelve siblings. Shortly before his eleventh birthday, in 1996, he became a ward of the state of Tennessee. In the years that followed he lived on the streets or stayed with friends. According to Michael Lewis's book The Blind Side, he attended eleven schools in his first nine years, repeated first and second grade, and at one point had a grade-point average of 0.6.

A friend's father helped him enrol at Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis, where he was one of few Black students; his athletic ability played a part in his admission. In 2003, around the age of 17, he began staying with Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, whose daughter was a classmate, and he eventually lived with them full time.

In 2005 he earned a football scholarship to the University of Mississippi. He started 47 consecutive games there and was a consensus All-American in 2008. The Baltimore Ravens chose him 23rd overall in the 2009 draft. Over eight seasons with the Ravens, the Tennessee Titans and the Carolina Panthers, he started 110 games and won a Super Bowl with Baltimore. He last played in 2016 and started The Oher Foundation to support disadvantaged students.

His life became the basis of the film The Blind Side. In his 2011 memoir, I Beat the Odds, he disputed some details of how the book and film portrayed him, and wrote that the Tuohys were a big part of his story but that his success began long before he met them. In August 2023 he filed a court petition in Tennessee contesting the legal arrangement he had with the family, which the Tuohys disputed.