Sacking the Competition and Thundering Among the MBAs

Michael Oher is a 300-pound football player who jumped from the wrong side of the tracks to sudden wealth and a promising NFL career. So why is his story so popular among MBA students and corporate executives? Perhaps it has a lot to do with the magic of financials driving outcomes.

by Gabby Hyman
gabby.hyman@MBA-business-schools.com
MBA-Business-Schools Book Reviewer

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis, hardcover; 299 pages. W. W. Norton & Company, $24.95. Why would a man with a graduate degree in economics from the London School of Economics write a book about a football prodigy? Perhaps the larger question is why a book about a football prodigy rides near the top of this month’s New York Times Business Book Bestseller’s List? Perhaps because Michael Lewis has followed the success of his baseball economics book Moneyball with a story that surely appeals to MBA students and CEOs everywhere.

Having assessed the financial bottom lines that drive major-league baseball, Lewis tackles the ever-narrowing trend in professional football to identify talent at a troubling young age and impress a narrow focus on the individual at the cost of all other concerns. So what’s the key that unlocks The Blind Side’s popularity in the business sector? Are talented young financial wizards treated the same way by our culture? Do economists and managers who mentor in our MBA programs single out prodigies and groom them for roles that forgo most other options? The answers tell us whether MBA students are so devoted to success that they eschew social and spiritual aspects of living.

Michael Oher, The Blind Side’s unlikely real-life protagonist, has a legendary change of life at a young age. The 300-pound behemoth from a black West Memphis ghetto gets adopted by a cross-tracks, well-strapped Republican family. In spite of his near-zero scholarly aptitude, Oher attends a Christian school that is more than willing to have him patrol the defensive side of their football field with his lithe footwork and brute destructive mastery. In short, early in life, Oher’s professional molding began in earnest, following an NFL paradigm that advances the super-able while cutting all other corners.

By his Ole Miss football hero years, Oher has become a man of privilege—contingent on his continuing health and usefulness to his team as a recruiting tool, of course. In short, he’s a huge success by both physical and financial measures.

How close are the forces that drive this Cinderfella’s tale to those that power Big Business—or an MBA paradigm? Perhaps unspoken identification explains the book’s powerful appeal to an unlikely business audience longing to be mentored into a position of success. Still, the bottom line message may be “Pace yourself. And be wary of getting too much, too soon.”

Lewis is author of Liar’s Poker and Moneyball. He is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, a columnist for Bloomberg, former Spectator contributor, and senior editor of The New Republic. He holds a B.A. from Princeton and an MSc in Economics.

Gabby Hyman has created online strategies and written content for Fortune 500 companies including eToys, GoTo.com, Siebel Systems, Microsoft Encarta, Avaya, and Nissan UK.

Posted on December 28, 2006 at 12:46 PM

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