This is a guy you have to root for

USA Today:

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Meet Michael Oher (pronounced OAR), a 6-5, 309-pound All-America tackle from the University of Mississippi who is the subject of a best-selling book —The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, which is being turned into a movie — but until a few years ago was legally Michael Williams.

Among 13 siblings from the poorest part of Memphis, he never knew his father, whose murder he learned of months after the fact in high school. His mother, Denise Oher, was addicted to crack cocaine. The kids were scattered about.

Michael attended 11 schools in nine years.If not in a foster home, he lived with friends. He was homeless.

"As I look back on stuff, it's crazy how I got here," he says. "But it didn't seem tough at the time. I just lived day to day, did the best I could."

A turning point came when Tony Henderson, who allowed Michael to crash on his sofa, brought him along when he took his son Steven to enroll at Briarcrest Christian School on the other side of town. Oher ultimately was admitted as a special-needs case.

Another pivotal moment occurred during his first Thanksgiving break, when Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy spotted Oher as they drove past a bus stop near the school. It was snowing. Oher, then 16, was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts.

Sean, then a volunteer assistant basketball coach at the school who had met Oher at the gym, says Leigh Anne grabbed the wheel. Next came a U-turn.

"She cried the second she met him, and it was over," Sean recalls.

The Tuohys took in Oher, allowing him a safety net in their home in upscale East Memphis two blocks from the school. For months he came and went as he pleased, and Leigh Anne worried when he didn't spend the night. They hired a tutor to address severe academic deficiencies, paid his tuition and gave him a wardrobe and other essentials. Sean says the generosity was not the result of any epiphany or even as much as a family meeting.

"We think God sent him to us," Sean says. "Earthly explanations don't make sense."

About a year later, Oher moved in permanently with the wealthy white family. Before Oher's senior year in high school, the Tuohys — with daughter Collins at Briarcrest and a younger son, Sean Jr. — became his legal guardians.

"They've got big hearts," Oher says. "To take somebody from my neighborhood into your house? Nobody does that. I don't think I'd even do that. I'd help you out, but with a daughter and with all the violence and drugs where I come from ... they didn't have to do that. I owe a lot to them."

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I love you.

Oher surely remembers that statement. It came from Leigh Anne when he was 18, and it was the first time anyone ever uttered those words to him.

When he has kids, Oher says, they will hear it early and often.

This sentimental side he wears like body armor. As much as he aspires to become an NFL star, Oher envisions himself as a family man and supportive dad.

"He has such character and perseverance," says Collins Tuohy, 22, set to graduate from Ole Miss next month. "Obviously, he's changed and matured over the years. But we all do between the ages of 15 and 23."

Collins and Oher have a tight bond. It began when she helped him adjust to Briarcrest. It strengthened as they attended the same college. Oher took Collins to the hospital when she was ill and got the call when there was a flat tire.

"He mentors me; I mentor him," Collins says. "It just depends on the day."

As she prepared to accompany Oher to New York, where he is one of nine prospects invited to draft headquarters, Collins sounded like a typical sister.

"I'm a bit nervous," she said. "I really don't want him trucking off to some faraway place."

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I will be interested to see where he is drafted on Saturday. It is a remarkable story.