A Peyton Manning/Seth Meyers Spoof Saw Through ‘The Blind Side’ Years Ago

Michael Oher, the All-American tackle from Ole Miss who became the subject of the movie The Blind Side has decided that the film’s story isn’t so heartwarming after all. He’s now alleging that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy (played by Oscar-winning Sandra Bullock) tricked him into a conservatorship by having him sign what he believed to be adoption papers inviting him into their family. But the Tuohys never adopted him, Oher says. Instead, the petition claims he signed papers that gave the Tuohy family the right to negotiate business deals on Oher’s behalf, including lucrative movie contracts based on his life story.

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Yikes. Something sure sounds shady, but we didn’t have to wait this long to find out. In fact, Peyton Manning and Seth Meyers already hinted at the real lowdown via a comedy video they made for the 2010 ESPYs. 

The movie trailer spoof now seems oddly prescient. It begins with Bullock’s Leigh Anne living her best life as a narrator intones: “She had an ideal life. But she also had a dark secret… she liked to collect… football players.”

In this bizarro version of The Blind Side, Manning is Leigh Anne’s latest acquisition. She confronts him on the street about needing a place to stay. Manning insists that he’s good — he’s Peyton Manning after all. He owns a couple of homes. Leigh Anne doesn’t want to hear it as she leads him to her car. “Okay,” says Manning, “but only because you’re freaking me out.”

At home, Leigh Anne unveils the big comfy bed she’s procured for Manning. “I’ve never had one before,” he confesses.

“A room to yourself?” she asks.

“No,” says Manning. “A crazy lady holding me against my will.”

The video plays out like a horror-movie spoof, but in the context of Oher’s recent revelations, it comes disturbingly close to the truth of a manipulative woman hellbent on controlling her pigskin-playing houseguest. Even frantic calls to brother Eli can’t help Manning escape her clutches.

“Was she crazy about football?” asks the narrator. “Or just crazy?”

Meyers shows up as a teacher with a billy goat’s goatee, all too aware that his high school student is actually NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. It’s pretty apparent from the essay he turned in about Tale of Two Cities: “Help. Please help me. Call the police. I’m Peyton Manning, and I’ve been kidnapped by the lady from Speed.”

The trailer concludes with Leigh Anne inviting Manning to join the family, just as Oher once believed she had invited him to do the same in real life.  Manning is more reluctant to sign those papers. “Let me ask you kids something,” he says to Leigh Anne’s birth children. “She kidnapped you as well?

Grins and nods are the chilling response. 

The spoof concludes with the film’s new name: The Dark Side. Oher is probably out there somewhere nodding in agreement.