In football, as in life, the worthiness we put on people changes with the guidelines of the video games they play.

Whenever we first meet up with the son at the guts of the extraordinary and moving story, he is among thirteen children with a mother addicted to crack; he will not know his real name, his dad, his birthday, or the things a child might find out in school. And he has no serious encounter playing organized football.

What adjustments? He takes up football, and college, after a wealthy, Evangelical, Republican family plucks him in the mean streets. Their love may be the first great drive that alters the world’s conception of the youngster, whom they adopt. The second force is the development of professional football itself.

In THE BLIND SIDE, Lewis shows us a largely unanalyzed but inexorable trend in football functioning its way down from the professionals to the senior high school game, where it collides with the life span of an individual young man to produce a narrative of great and unexpected power.