from a growl to an ugggh

I just read geoff calkins' commercial appeal column about the memphis grizz, our nba team. we drew fourth - FOURTH!!! - pick in the draft last night. fourth ain't good, folks, and it likely won't mean the season we need to pull our team (and lets face it, this city) out of a rut. I couldn't even watch the grizz play offs this spring, because I miss hubie and the sheriff and hate like hell that pau wants off this merry-go-round. I do want to find out where big baby, my fave college player (he shot for lsu) is gonna go, but I'm too heartsick to read more right now.

for me, football doesn't measure up, but the college teams are already starting to scrimmage in the humidity, which has me wondering about ole miss left tackle michael oher, subject of the blind side (michael lewis, ww norton). born and raised on the wrong side of memphis, oher was nearly a forgotten child. his mother was a drug addict, his father a murder victim, when he wound up at briarcrest christian high school (my hellish alma mater) in east memphis. through a series of incredibly fortuitous events, documented by lewis, oher was taken in by another family who had two kids at the school, and eventually adopted. today, he plays for the university of mississippi, the alma mater of his new father, who just happens to be sean tuohy, commentator for the memphis grizzlies.

I was lucky enough to catch up with lewis and tuohy for a story I penned for the memphis business journal last year:

“the ncaa is actually worried that the tuohys are the next generation of boosters, who will go into the ghetto to adopt football players,” lewis told me. “but sean isn’t a typical booster – he’s beyond that. he isn’t like the guy who paid for albert means [the late logan young, memphian and infamous alabama supporter] – that’s not his m.o. I’m not sure if sean thinks that ole miss will ever have a good football team – he doesn’t even seem to care that much.”

before last winter's book signing in oxford, mississippi, lewis said that he heard a rumor that the university of mississippi’s athletic director sent out a memo trying to find factual errors in his book. “they thought it was bad for ole miss, then they found out it was good. there are a lot of white people happy to have a story told about racial relations that isn’t a horror story,” he said. “they gave me a medal at the business school, and I gave a talk at square books. I never signed so many books!”

“I’m no more less proud of [oher] than I am my other son and daughter,” sean tuohy told me. “so far, this has been a five-year experience for us, so today is just another day. the truth is, if michael lewis hadn’t written the book, we never would’ve looked back.”

“I always looked at this story as a positive,” tuohy added, making an oblique reference to the albert means recruiting scandal. “what you hope is that memphis is maybe back to even.”