The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis

“In Lawrence Taylor’s first season in the NFL, no official records were kept of quarterback sacks. In 1982, after Taylor had transformed the quarterback sack into the turning point of a football game, a new official NFL statistic was born.”
– Chapter 1, pg. 14

“Michael Oher had a measured IQ of 80, which put him in mankind’s 9th percentile. An aptitude test he had taken in the eighth grade had measured his “ability to learn” and ranked him in the 6th percentile. The numbers looked like misprints: in a rich white private school, under the column marked ‘percentile,’ you never saw single digit numbers. Of course, logically, you knew such people must exist; for someone to be in the 99th percentile, someone else had to be in the 1st. But you didn’t expect to meet them at Briarcrest Christian School.” – Chapter 3, pg. 45

“Without uttering a peep, the kid had become the talk of the school. Everyone was frightened of him, until they realized that he was far more terrified of them.” – Chapter 3, pg. 57

“One of his more talented teammates, Joseph Crone, thought Michael Oher’s main contribution came before the game, when the opposing team stumbled out of their locker room or their bus, and took the measure of the Briarcrest Christian School. ‘They’d see all of us,’ said Crone, ‘and then they’d see Mike and say, oh crap.’” – Chapter 4, pg. 69

“Bill Walsh made the quarterback a lot more valuable, and so the man who protected the quarterback was going to be a whole lot more valuable, too. Whoever he was, he was going to have to be special.” – Chapter 5, pg. 113

“Leigh Anne snapped the family Christmas card picture and sent it out to several hundred friends and distant relatives, without it ever occurring to her that most of the recipients would have no idea about the strange new addition to the family. A few weeks later, the phone rang late one night. It was a North Carolina cousin. ‘All right,’ he blurted into the phone. ‘Who the hell is this black kid in y’all’s Christmas card?’” – Chapter 7, pg. 147

So those were some of my favorite book quotes from The Blind Side by Michael Lewis.

Two years ago, while watching the Super Bowl (don’t bother asking me who was playing or which team won), my guy friend told me about this book. He insisted that I would love it even though I didn’t know the first thing about

football (expect that it's not soccer). I humored him and continued to root for the team with the prettiest colors, cutest mascot or sexiest quarterback, not truly believing I could endure 300 pages of sports lingo. I ended up buying the book a few weeks later and stashing it under my bed until I heard Sandra Bullock was to star in the movie adaptation. Turns out my friend was right: I laughed, I cried, I laughed again, I went through ten boxes of Kleenex, and I actually learned a little bit about the invention of “the passing game” and how some guy named Lawrence Taylor is responsible for the increased interest in the left tackle position. I feel so well-rounded.