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Nathan Braisted

“The Blind Side” needs a 15-yard ‘overrated’ penalty


The most prominent athletic season at Troy University is finally upon us in fall 2024. Troy Trojans football is back in action at Veterans Memorial Stadium, kicking off one of the most exciting times of the year.


Nothing brings people together like football, but nothing splits people apart like football either.


This week, I’ll be talking about a football movie based on true events that caused an atypical family to experience both sides of that spectrum.


I’m sure you read the title of this article. You know I’m talking about “The Blind Side” with the one and only Sandra Bullock.


It’s been regarded as one of the better football movies out there, but I personally didn’t think it was that great, especially now that I know that it was highly exaggerated and sugar-coated compared to what actually happened.


If you haven’t seen the movie, it's a loose biography on the story of the former NFL player and Super Bowl Champion Michael Oher and his relationship with a southern suburban family that rescued him from homelessness and helped launch his impressive football career.


As a movie, it’s pretty good. The dialogue is well written, the cinematography is great, and the acting is brilliant all the way through. Sandra Bullock deserved that Golden Globe and Academy Award just for her southern accent alone.


We finally got to see an actor in a southern role that doesn’t take the drawl to absolute extremes. Not once does she outrageously say “PEE-CANN” or answer the phone with “YYYELLOW?” like we see in so many other depictions of southern characters.


The plot itself is also very good, but it takes a hit due to being vastly different from the actual story. It is written more like a fake app store review of the family.


As a football movie, specifically, it’s even worse. There’s really not that much football  in it. We get to see him struggle in practice for a minute, go through a short and below-average training montage and then like one actual game. I consider this to be the La Croix of football movies – you really have to pay attention to know exactly what it is.


There are also some really interesting things that were left out like Hugh Freeze being Michael’s head coach at Briarcrest, or the fact Michael was also an all-state basketball player and discus thrower on top of being an elite football player. It felt like they had shot all of that and included it, and then an executive came in on the last day and said “people don’t care about track and field, just make it about football,” and they cut a quarter of the movie in one foul swoop.


It’s a run-of-the-mill sports movie that loses all its punch when you think about its real-world counterpart. However, it is a very easy watch for a casual movie night, so I still encourage at least one watch of it to see how you feel about it.

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