A tale of 2 linemen: 'Blind Side' subject, another Ole Miss player get opposite results from BYU Independent Study courses

PROVO — Once upon a time, the lives of Michael Oher and Jerrell Powe bore a striking resemblance to each other — right up until they enrolled in BYU Independent Study courses.

Then their paths diverged.

During the five years since, Oher — the subject of the popular film "The Blind Side" — graduated from college and vaulted to riches in the NFL, while Powe bounced among four schools and worked as a jailer to make ends meet.

Like a riddle wrapped up in an enigma, the same catalyst — credits from BYU Independent Study — proved to be Oher's big break and Powe's stumbling block.

In the spring of 2005, Oher and Powe were 18-year-old dancing bears: 300-pound behemoths blessed with freakish agility.

Both were big-time football recruits — Rivals.com ranked Oher and Powe 48th and 24th, respectively, on its list of the 100 best high school players in the country. The pair even signed to play for the same school, the University of Mississippi. But before they could suit up and play for the Rebels, Oher and Powe each faced an uphill battle to meet the NCAA's academic eligibility requirements for playing college football.

In an effort to boost their GPAs, the two players turned to BYU Independent Study, which offers 81 NCAA-approved high school courses in subjects ranging from first-year Latin to Alaskan history. Most classes allow the student to choose between an online or hard-copy lesson manual. Courses producing the equivalent of a semester-long grade cost $124.

Within the last decade, BYU Independent Study developed a reputation as an ideal mechanism for repairing the pockmarked prep transcripts of prospective college athletes. Oher and Powe both enrolled in BYU courses on the advice of adult benefactors who were helping guide the prodigiously talented linemen toward college eligibility.

In 2006, the best-selling Michael Lewis book "The Blind Side" shined a national spotlight on BYU Independent Study. Lewis details how Oher replaced several failing grades in high school English by taking BYU "Character Education" courses that merely required Oher to "read a few brief passages from famous works … and then answer five questions about it." The author coined the phrase "the great Mormon grade-grab" to describe Oher's accelerated grade rehabilitation.