What's "puzzling". Boy howdy, there's some hard-hitting journalism from People Magazine.
First, let's deal with the MOST important, MOST relevant issue. The LOI:
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Second, let's deal with the timeline:
2004 - Michael Oher's 18th birthday, and the year when the conservatorship was put into effect
2005 - Michael Oher signs with Ole Miss at approximately 18 years, 9 months of age
2006 - The Blind Side book is published
2009 - The Blind Side movie is released
Third, as People BELATEDLY acknowledges in the article, one of the most significant differences between adoption and conservatorship is...there is no INHERITANCE right in a conservatorship. So, I don't know, I'm going to spitball an idea here...regardless of whether this is COMMON (it is not), perhaps someone advised the Tuohy family that PERHAPS the NCAA might be concerned that a MULTI-MILLIONAIRE family is trying to adopt an 18-year-old 5-star football recruit RIGHT BEFORE SIGNING DAY. Because, you know, that would be a pretty neat loophole for everyone to exploit, you find a bunch of multi-millionaires to "adopt" kids right before Signing Day, giving them inheritance rights. Brilliant.
Finally, as gets overlooked by People and others, a judge approved the conservatorship. Unlike, say, a terrible Grant of Rights contract, or an eternal TV contract, or a rotten sports apparel contract, a judge actually reviewed this conservatorship agreement before it went into effect. So, I don't know, maybe this isn't just some rich people taking advantage of a kid.
And to be clear, in 2004, THERE WAS NO MONEY. Sure, maybe there could have been future money, but the conservatorship was put into place for legal and familial reasons, not to take in any money related to The Blind Side, which had yet to be published and/or made into a movie.
So, if some of these breathless articles would bother to research what really happened, instead of yapping about how Michael Oher had "no physical or mental limitations", or by using his LATER collegiate academic achievement to retroactively prove there was no "mental impairment" need for a conservatorship, maybe we could reduce the hatred and finger-pointing.
By all accounts, Michael Oher:
1. Had a 0.76 GPA
2. Had a mother with alcohol and crack cocaine addictions
3. Had a father who was frequently incarcerated and was killed in prison during Michael's senior year of high school
4. Was placed in foster care at age 7 and was occasionally homeless
5. Failed first and second grade and attended 11 schools in his first 9 years of public school
None of that is to suggest that Michael Oher is a bad person or an incapable person, but to point out the tremendous turmoil in his life before the age of 18, and to show WHY someone might want to help out a person with tremendous capabilities in other areas, capabilities that could be life-changing.
Michael Oher needed a LEGAL GUARDIAN to sign his LOI, years before The Blind Side book/movie became a money-making venture. And let's not pretend that the NCAA wasn't scrutinizing every aspect of this.
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