Summary
The sixth chapter continues to explore Michael's transition at Briarcrest as he joins the football team. Michael familiarizes himself with the plays while Leigh Anne and Sean attend the games and help him hone his craft. At the same time, Michael slowly adjusts to the additional attention he receives at school as he becomes a central part of the team.
In a game early in the season, a player on the opposing team keeps taunting Michael. He mocks Michael's weight throughout the game. Michael responds by picking him up, carrying him across the field, past the fence, and onto the grass nearby. The player is shaken up but Michael does not receive a penalty. Michael says to Leigh Anne that he planning to take him all the way to the bus, as he needed "to go home."
Michael continues to get closer with Leigh Anne and begins going through the formalities of getting a social security card and driver's license. In the process, Leigh Anne gleans more information about Michael's past, including his father's absence and his many half-siblings. Leigh Anne helps Michael gather the documents he needs for the test, including his original birth certificate, which he has to pick up from his mother. Michael goes to take the test for his driver's license and Leigh Anne hears the machine make various buzzer sounds when he gets answers wrong. She becomes increasingly worried, but he passes narrowly.
She also regularly fields uncomfortable and plainly racist questions from people asking how she really feels about Michael living with her family. She responds that she treats him no differently than her other kids. At another game, Leigh Anne gets into a conflict with Michael's coach, Hugh Freeze, asking why he won't utilize Michael in a straightforward way, as he prefers elaborate plays. Initially the coach is very resistant to the idea, but eventually changes his tune. They win throughout the season and Michael is recognized as a star player.
In the seventh chapter, Lewis depicts Michael's meetings with different college coaches who try to recruit him to their schools. The offers begin to pile up, but Leigh Anne is protective of Michael and helps him sort through them. Michael visits various schools and gets a sense of the campus culture at each of them. His top three choices are the University of Mississippi, the University of Tennessee, and Louisiana State University.
Concurrently, Lewis also depicts Michael's close relationship with SJ, Sean and Leigh Anne's son who becomes like a brother to Michael. The two of them get in a minor car accident and Michael panics afterward, as he feels intensely protective of SJ. SJ frequently attends Michael's meetings with coaches, asking how closely he can be involved in Michael's life on the football field.
While Michael and the Tuohys are very charmed by Nick Saban, coach at Louisiana State University, his departure to the Miami Dolphins dissuades Michael from pursuing LSU. Michael ultimately chooses to attend University Mississippi, the Tuohys' alma mater, after meeting with the school's coach and liking him. Everyone is excited about his choice and anxious to see how he does in this next phase of his sports career.
Analysis
This section of the book narrates a period of change, as Michael develops as a player and begins to garner more and more attention. He also begins to put down more permanent roots as he knows he can rely on the Tuohys and no longer needs to struggle on a day-to-day basis. Concurrently with his development as a football player, these chapters portray Michael becoming a part of the Tuohy family, showing how he is loved and cared for by Sean and Leigh Anne as a son.
This part of the book revisits the theme of racism and prejudice. Lewis mentions earlier in the book that Leigh Anne's friends and family would often ask her offensive questions about Michael, inquiring about how safe she felt her children were around him, particularly her daughter Collins. These hurtful inquiries highlight how entrenched these racist assumptions remain in Memphis. While these moments also demonstrate how steadfast Leigh Anne is in her devotion to Michael, they also reveal how little has changed in the culture of Southern society, as people still feel entirely comfortable saying these terrible things to her openly.
A central part of this section also deals with the idea of family and its definition. For Sean and Leigh Anne, Michael is a son, and they treat him in the same way they do their other children. For Michael, the Tuohys are his chosen family and he feels safe with them in a way that he clearly has not before. This impression is solidified when Michael and Leigh Anne have to go to his mother's home to get important documents. The lack of photographs of Michael, as well as the poor physical condition of his birth certificate and the general disarray of her home, strongly indicate the kind of neglect he suffered as a child. By zeroing in on these details, and contrasting them with Leigh Anne's close relationship with Michael, Lewis is able to explain how the Tuohys became Michael's family of choice. Likewise, he shows how the Tuohys did not make a distinction between Michael and SJ and Collins. In their view, blood relationships are the central aspect of being a family.
Fear is another important thread in this section of the book. In the seventh chapter, Michael is involved in a car accident while driving with SJ. Michael is relatively unharmed, but SJ's face is injured. When Michael speaks with Leigh Anne, he is in a state of panic, as he is extremely worried about SJ and feels extremely guilty and frightened about the incident. She tells him SJ will be fine but notes how protective he is. This moment showcases the way that Michael takes care of the people he loves and shows a fierce devotion to them. In the view of the book, this quality makes him not only a good player but also a caring older brother.
This chapter also returns to the idea of football culture, once again examining some of its less appealing characteristics. Leigh Anne is wary of the coaches who reach out to Michael, as she knows they will do and say a great deal to get him to play at their school, but likely do not have his best interests in mind. In focusing on the intense pursuit of Michael in this period, Lewis is able to comment more broadly on the way in which coaches relentlessly chase pre-college players and try to strategically woo them. The book seems to implicitly question how ethical some of this behavior is, as the coaches are often looking to make the largest amount of money off of their players, many of whom do not have the devoted support network that Michael does.
