Barrington scout pursues passion by playing himself in 'The Blind Side'

Barrington's Tom Lemming is one of the most renowned football scouts in the world, the man credited with creating what is now the vast industry devoted to ranking high-school football players and getting them into the top college programs.

"Football is my life, but I'm not crazy about it," Lemming admits. "I'm the biggest movie junkie in the world."

So when he was asked if he'd be interested in playing himself in the feature film "The Blind Side," the Sandra Bullock star vehicle based on the life of the Baltimore Ravens' rookie tackle Michael Oher, he jumped at it. "When they told me that I got real excited," Lemming says. "I'm not an actor, so for me the whole thing was like being at Disneyland."

Yet, if that's the case, it started out as a Space Mountain thrill ride that all but took his breath away.

First he had to give the straight-arm to friends like movie star Jim Caviezel, who started giving him acting tips over the phone. "I said, 'Jim, I'm playing myself. I'm just trying to survive this thing,'" Lemming recalls. He fell back on what he knew was a strength in an excellent memory. The same knack that enabled him to process and rank hundreds of players he sees coast to coast, typically driving 60,000 miles a year, made it easy for him to memorize dialogue, even as he was scripted to play more than a bit part, with about five minutes of speeches.

Still, it all went away in an instant on his first day of shooting. "Right before the director says, 'Action,' I hear this girl saying, 'All right officer, stop traffic,'" Lemming says. "And my heart starts going into my head."

The scene called for him to climb stairs, stop, turn and deliver his lines. "And I pivot, and I immediately forget everything single thing I'm supposed to say," Lemming adds. "I was so mortified, I actually thought my life was ending. My only thing I had going for me was my memory. In my mind, I was thinking I wanted to be anywhere else in the world but right there, because I didn't think I could finish."

His co-stars in the scene, Ray McKinnon and country singer Tim McGraw, likewise shifting careers to try acting, told him to relax and take it easy, as did director John Lee Hancock. "They made me feel so comfortable," Lemming says. He made it through that scene, and "as soon as I got the second scene done without making a mistake I started to feel comfortable," he says. From then on, it was a smooth ride.

And why shouldn't it be? Lemming's story as the man who all but created college scouting, sleeping in his car on extended road trips at the age of 22, is almost as interesting as Oher's tale of going from illiterate teenager to multimillionaire as an NFL rookie after attending the University of Mississippi. Lemming was a key figure in the Michael Lewis book the movie is based on.

"Everything's the truth in the book. The movie's sometimes exaggerated," Lemming says. "The book is exceptionally accurate. The movie's accurate with all the main things, but they take license, like every movie I think, making things a little more exciting."

Oher himself hasn't always been flattered by the attention. "You know, Michael Oher's real upset with the book and the movie. Everything's kind of pointing to make him look dumb. He was functionally illiterate, but wasn't a dumb guy. He'd never had an education," Lemming says. "But it's a real heartwarming story, and most of it's true."

The film opens this weekend, just in time for the holiday movie season, which also happens to be crunchtime for Lemming as he ranks the nationwide prospects. He says he usually gets away from it all - and from the lobbying phone calls and requests for information - by turning off the cell phone to see four films or more in a week through December and January, possibly even "The Blind Side" again.

"For me, being a movie buff and not being an actor," Lemming says, "I thought it was one of the best experiences of my life." Not that he's considering a career change. He talks passionately about his chosen field and how this year, for the first time, he hit all 50 states. "I love it," Lemming says. Hollywood's loss is football's gain.