An Amazing Story (The Ballad of Big Mike)

So I was reading up on peoples mock drafts and what not...this isn't you average draft diary.  

I was reading about a kid named Michael Oher, he comes from about 20 minutes away from where I originally hail.  It really is a special story, and should probably be a movie actually.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/ma...

thats the link, from the ny times.  Please, read this.  You'll be better for it afterwards.  This kid is an offensive lineman but had a more than troubled childhood. He's mammoth in size and im going to post an excerpt from this article.  

The set-up;  Well, he wasn't that adept at playing football, he was easily confused by the plays and what exactly to do.  He just wasn't that football smart.  They said his biggest problems was that he had this amazing size, speed, and strength, but no aggression, didn't know how to use it.  Well This kid thought he was going to get under his skin...

From the first play of the game, the Munford defensive end who lined up directly across from Michael targeted him for special ridicule. The Munford player was about 6-foot-2 and couldn’t have weighed more than 220 pounds, and yet he wouldn’t shut up. Every play, he had something nasty to say.

Hey, fat ass, I’m a kill you!

Hey, fat ass! Fat people can’t play football! I’m a run your fat ass over!

The more he went on, the angrier Michael became, and yet no one noticed. Freeze ordered up plays that called for Michael to block a linebacker or to pull and sweep around the right end and leave the defensive end across from him alone. The first quarter and a half of the scrimmage was uneventful — until Freeze called a different sort of play.

Leigh Anne rose from her seat to beat the crowd to the concession stand and so had her back to the action when the people in the stands around her began to laugh.

"Where’s he taking him?" she heard someone say.

"He’s not letting go of that kid!" shouted someone else.

She turned around in time to see 19 football players running down one side of the field after the Briarcrest running back with the ball. On the other side of the field Briarcrest’s No. 74, Big Mike, was racing at full speed in the opposite direction, with a defensive end in his arms.

From his place on the sideline, Sean watched in amazement. Freeze had called a running play, around the right end, away from Michael’s side. Michael’s job was simply to take the defender who had been jabbering at him and wall him off. Just keep him away from the ball carrier. Instead, he had fired off the line of scrimmage and gotten fit — which is to say, gotten his hands inside the defender’s shoulder pads — and then lifted the Munford player off the ground. It was a perfectly legal block, with unusual consequences. He drove the Munford player straight down the middle of the field for 15 yards, then took a hard left, toward the Munford sidelines. "The Munford kid’s feet were hitting the ground every four steps, like a cartoon character," Sean says. As the kid strained to get his feet back on the ground, Michael ran him the next 25 or so yards to the Munford bench. When he got there, he didn’t stop but piled right through it, knocking over the bench, several more Munford players and scattering the team. He didn’t skip a beat. Encircling the football field was a cinder track. He blocked the kid across the track and then across the grass on the other side of the cinder track. And kept going — right to the chain link fence on the far side of the grass.

Flags flew, grown men cursed and Sean called Michael over to the sidelines.

"Michael," said Sean, "where were you taking him anyway?"

"I was gonna put him on the bus," Michael said.
Parked on the other side of the chain-link fence was, in fact, the Munford team bus.

"The bus?" Sean asked.

"I got tired of him talking," Michael said. "It was time for him to go home."

I recommend everyone read this, it's an amazing story, I can't say that enough.  Keep in mind, this kid was in high school when he did this.

Again all credit to this goes to the new york times and the author of said story.