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Tough Luck: Sid Luckman, Murder, Inc., and the Rise of the Modern NFL
In the long annals of sports and crime, no story compares to the one that engulfed the Luckman family in 1935. As 18-year-old Sid Luckman made headlines across New York City for his high school football exploits at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, his father, Meyer Luckman, was making headlines in the same papers for a very different reason: the gangland murder of his own brother-in-law. Amazingly, when Sid became a star at Columbia and a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback in Chicago, all of it while Meyer Luckman served 20-years-to-life in Sing Sing Prison, the connection between sports celebrity son and mobster father was studiously ignored by the press and ultimately overlooked for eight decades.Tough Luck traces two simultaneous historical developments through a single immigrant family in Depression-era New York: the rise of the National Football League led by the dynastic Chicago Bears, whose famed owner George Halas convinced Sid Luckman to help him turn the sluggish game of pro football into America's favorite pastime; and the demise--triggered by Meyer Luckman's crime and initial coverup--of the Brooklyn labor rackets and Louis Lepke's infamous organization Murder, Inc. Filled with colorful characters--from ambitious district attorney-turned-governor Thomas Dewey and legendary columnist Walter Winchell, to Sid Luckman's rival quarterback "Slingin'" Sammy Baugh and pro football's unsung intellectual genius Clark Shaughnessy; from the lethal Lepke and hit men like "Tick Tock" Tannenbaum, to Sid's powerful post-career friends Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio--Tough Luck memorably evokes an era of vicious Brooklyn mobsters and undefeated Monsters of the Midway, a time when the media kept their mouths shut and the soft-spoken son of a murderer could become a beloved legend with a hidden past.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published September 3, 2019
98 people are currently reading
881 people want to read
About the author
R.D. Rosen
20 books32 followersRichard Dean Rosen's writing career spans mystery novels, narrative nonfiction, humor books, and television. Strike Three You're Dead (1984), the first in Rosen's series featuring major league baseball player Harvey Blissberg, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America in 1985. Blissberg's adventures continued in four sequels, including Fadeaway (1986) and Saturday Night Dead (1988), which drew on Rosen's stint as a writer for Saturday Night Live.
Rosen's three nonfiction books include Psychobabble (1979), inspired by the term he coined, and A Buffalo in the House: The True Story of a Man, an Animal, and the American West (2007). Over the past decade, he co-created and co-wrote a bestselling series of humor books: Bad Cat, Bad Dog, Bad Baby, and Bad President.
He attended Brown University and graduated from Harvard College.
Rosen's three nonfiction books include Psychobabble (1979), inspired by the term he coined, and A Buffalo in the House: The True Story of a Man, an Animal, and the American West (2007). Over the past decade, he co-created and co-wrote a bestselling series of humor books: Bad Cat, Bad Dog, Bad Baby, and Bad President.
He attended Brown University and graduated from Harvard College.
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September 22, 2019
With fall officially beginning this week and my baseball team in free fall, I have began to turn my undivided attention to football. Ok, I have had most of sports attention on football since the end of the Super Bowl, impatiently waiting for my team of choice to begin defense of their title, but that is a story for another time. This year the National Football League turns 100 years old, and the League has planned a season long celebration. Each Monday night matchup this year is set to pay homage to a classic rivalry or moment from the history of the league, the first of which was the Packers and Bears on the league’s opening night. While the Bears, team of choice to other members of my family, failed to impress that night, the commentators noted storied players from both teams over their one hundred year rivalry. Nearly seventy years has passed since he last played a snap, yet Sid Luckman remains one of the top players ever to put on a Bears uniform. R. D. Rosen, a neighbor of the Luckman family growing up in suburban Chicago, has taken it upon himself to write a definitive biography of Luckman, one of Chicago’s most revered athletes.
Sidney Luckman grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the son of Russian immigrants. According to family lore, his family was friends with my grandmother’s family in Flatbush so I grew up hearing stories of Luckman as a Jewish star quarterback of the Bears, who happened to be a friend of my maternal family. Luckman starred at Erasmus Hall High School, lettering in football, baseball, and basketball. During the 1930s, Luckman was just one of many Jews who roamed the halls of Erasmus High who would go on to have illustrious careers in sports, politics, and show business. It was obvious to most who know Sid that his star shined one of the brightest of all. From Erasmus, Luckman would go on to Columbia University and play both quarterback and shortstop for the baseball team, catching the eye of George Halas, the coach of the Chicago Bears and founder of the National Football League. Halas was always employing new innovations to help his still cash strapped league and he believed that Luckman had the brains and just enough brawn to run a new style offense that would help modernize the NFL. By 1938, Halas decided that Luckman would be his top priority in the upcoming league draft.
Luckman harbored a deep secret and had no desire to play professional football for his career. His father Meyer Luckman had been a cog in the Jewish mafia run ably by Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, and in 1935, the elder Luckman was convicted of the murder of his brother-in-law Sam Drukman and deigned to spend the rest of his life in New York’s notorious Sing Sing Prison. Luckman’s mother Ethel cut off all contact with her husband and told all who asked that he was dead. Her older son Leo had ambitions of his own but took over the family trucking business, along with two cousins. Sid was called a murderer’s son in the hallways of Erasmus High and his high school and later college and professional coaches took him under their wing as father figures to a now fatherless son. In 1939 Sid’s wife Estelle, also Brooklyn raised, had no desire to leave Flatbush, but Halas convinced the couple to come to Chicago to a tune of $5000. Sid Luckman was on his way to becoming the NFL’s next star while leaving town and burying a family secret that his children would no little about until the research began for this book.
Luckman lead the Bears to four NFL championships in seven years at a time when Jews were being killed in Europe just for being Jewish. Luckman’s shining moment came in the 1940 NFL Championship game when the Bears defeated the Washington Redskins 73-0. The Redskins quarterback was Luckman’s longtime rival Sammy Baugh, yet the team still used an old style offense that relied more on the running game. Baugh’s team may not have been as gifted as Luckman’s either, as Halas used his wits to draft college players with high football acumen, keeping their pay low to field a more complete team. The Bears of the early 1940s, Luckman’s heyday, ran the T-formation that opened up the passing game to slowly resemble offenses used today. Halas and his coaching guru Clark Shaughnessy transformed the Bears into the NFL’s first dynasty with Luckman at the helm as the first modern quarterback. At the end of his career, Luckman would throw 137 touchdown passes and be known as a leader on the field, staying close to the Bears as an unofficial quarterbacks coach for the rest of his life.
My dad still calls Sid Luckman the best quarterback in Bears history. He was lucky enough to attend the Bears championship victory in 1963, their first since Luckman retired in 1950. That 1963 team relied on running and defense, Bears mainstays to this day, showing the accuracy of my dad’s statement. As he buried his father’s secret deep in his heart for the rest of his life, Sid Luckman became a most giving person, endowing family, friends, and acquaintances with gifts and cash. Nieces and nephews called him a perfect uncle, and friends included Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, and Chicago business magnate Jay Pritzker. With a holiday gift list in the thousands and a large heart, Luckman chose to make up for his father’s discretion in spades. R.D. Rosen could not write about Sid Luckman without mentioning Meyer Luckman and Jewish organized crime of the 1930s. He weaves the two stories together tastefully as he emphasizes Sid Luckman and his exploits on and off of the football field, to this day the best Jewish star the National Football League has ever seen.
3.5 stars
Sidney Luckman grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the son of Russian immigrants. According to family lore, his family was friends with my grandmother’s family in Flatbush so I grew up hearing stories of Luckman as a Jewish star quarterback of the Bears, who happened to be a friend of my maternal family. Luckman starred at Erasmus Hall High School, lettering in football, baseball, and basketball. During the 1930s, Luckman was just one of many Jews who roamed the halls of Erasmus High who would go on to have illustrious careers in sports, politics, and show business. It was obvious to most who know Sid that his star shined one of the brightest of all. From Erasmus, Luckman would go on to Columbia University and play both quarterback and shortstop for the baseball team, catching the eye of George Halas, the coach of the Chicago Bears and founder of the National Football League. Halas was always employing new innovations to help his still cash strapped league and he believed that Luckman had the brains and just enough brawn to run a new style offense that would help modernize the NFL. By 1938, Halas decided that Luckman would be his top priority in the upcoming league draft.
Luckman harbored a deep secret and had no desire to play professional football for his career. His father Meyer Luckman had been a cog in the Jewish mafia run ably by Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, and in 1935, the elder Luckman was convicted of the murder of his brother-in-law Sam Drukman and deigned to spend the rest of his life in New York’s notorious Sing Sing Prison. Luckman’s mother Ethel cut off all contact with her husband and told all who asked that he was dead. Her older son Leo had ambitions of his own but took over the family trucking business, along with two cousins. Sid was called a murderer’s son in the hallways of Erasmus High and his high school and later college and professional coaches took him under their wing as father figures to a now fatherless son. In 1939 Sid’s wife Estelle, also Brooklyn raised, had no desire to leave Flatbush, but Halas convinced the couple to come to Chicago to a tune of $5000. Sid Luckman was on his way to becoming the NFL’s next star while leaving town and burying a family secret that his children would no little about until the research began for this book.
Luckman lead the Bears to four NFL championships in seven years at a time when Jews were being killed in Europe just for being Jewish. Luckman’s shining moment came in the 1940 NFL Championship game when the Bears defeated the Washington Redskins 73-0. The Redskins quarterback was Luckman’s longtime rival Sammy Baugh, yet the team still used an old style offense that relied more on the running game. Baugh’s team may not have been as gifted as Luckman’s either, as Halas used his wits to draft college players with high football acumen, keeping their pay low to field a more complete team. The Bears of the early 1940s, Luckman’s heyday, ran the T-formation that opened up the passing game to slowly resemble offenses used today. Halas and his coaching guru Clark Shaughnessy transformed the Bears into the NFL’s first dynasty with Luckman at the helm as the first modern quarterback. At the end of his career, Luckman would throw 137 touchdown passes and be known as a leader on the field, staying close to the Bears as an unofficial quarterbacks coach for the rest of his life.
My dad still calls Sid Luckman the best quarterback in Bears history. He was lucky enough to attend the Bears championship victory in 1963, their first since Luckman retired in 1950. That 1963 team relied on running and defense, Bears mainstays to this day, showing the accuracy of my dad’s statement. As he buried his father’s secret deep in his heart for the rest of his life, Sid Luckman became a most giving person, endowing family, friends, and acquaintances with gifts and cash. Nieces and nephews called him a perfect uncle, and friends included Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, and Chicago business magnate Jay Pritzker. With a holiday gift list in the thousands and a large heart, Luckman chose to make up for his father’s discretion in spades. R.D. Rosen could not write about Sid Luckman without mentioning Meyer Luckman and Jewish organized crime of the 1930s. He weaves the two stories together tastefully as he emphasizes Sid Luckman and his exploits on and off of the football field, to this day the best Jewish star the National Football League has ever seen.
3.5 stars
August 1, 2019
If you are a fan of the game of football, you know about Sid Luckman. He was the Hall of Fame quarterback of the Chicago Bears, the Monsters of the Midway and played for the iconic owner and coach, George Halas. He was also one of the few Jewish players in organized professional sports.
Luckman was a stand-out player in his Brooklyn high school and at Columbia University. He caught the eye of Halas who drafted him in 1938, The game of football in those early days of the NFL was not the game we know today........minimal passing and single wing formations made it a game of attrition.....huge defensive players smashing through the line and overwhelming the QB. Many players left the field on stretchers as there were no penalties to prevent "dirty" play in which the object was to knock your opponent unconscious. Halas and Luckman changed all that with the T-formation and a passing game which added excitement and skill to an otherwise rather boring game.
But Luckman had a secret which is the companion part of his biography. His father was connected to the Jewish mob and was sent to Sing Sing prison on a charge of 2nd degree murder thus avoiding the death penalty. Although it was front page of the newspapers at the time (Sid was still in grade school), the family never spoke of it and many of the next generation of the family were told that Luckman died even though he was still alive in prison. Surprisingly, the press did not sensationalize the issue and gave Sid Luckman the privacy that is unknown today for public figures.
The author blends the two stories seamlessly and this is an interesting biography of one of Chicago's great sports heroes. Luckman is portrayed as the perfect man, husband, and father which is a bit of a whitewash but not enough to ruin the book. You probably need to be a football fan to enjoy this book......and I did.
Luckman was a stand-out player in his Brooklyn high school and at Columbia University. He caught the eye of Halas who drafted him in 1938, The game of football in those early days of the NFL was not the game we know today........minimal passing and single wing formations made it a game of attrition.....huge defensive players smashing through the line and overwhelming the QB. Many players left the field on stretchers as there were no penalties to prevent "dirty" play in which the object was to knock your opponent unconscious. Halas and Luckman changed all that with the T-formation and a passing game which added excitement and skill to an otherwise rather boring game.
But Luckman had a secret which is the companion part of his biography. His father was connected to the Jewish mob and was sent to Sing Sing prison on a charge of 2nd degree murder thus avoiding the death penalty. Although it was front page of the newspapers at the time (Sid was still in grade school), the family never spoke of it and many of the next generation of the family were told that Luckman died even though he was still alive in prison. Surprisingly, the press did not sensationalize the issue and gave Sid Luckman the privacy that is unknown today for public figures.
The author blends the two stories seamlessly and this is an interesting biography of one of Chicago's great sports heroes. Luckman is portrayed as the perfect man, husband, and father which is a bit of a whitewash but not enough to ruin the book. You probably need to be a football fan to enjoy this book......and I did.
July 13, 2019
Late in his biography of Chicago Bear's legend, Sid Luckman, author Richard Rosen writes, "Well, that explains Sid's whole personality. He spent his entire life trying to undo what his father had done". That quote was made by an old family friend of Luckman's, and referred to a tightly kept secret in Luckman's life; his father died as a prisoner at Sing Sing. As Rosen tells in his book, "Tough Luck", Meyer Luckman was "sent up the river" (oh, how I've always wanted to write that!) for his part in the vicious killing of his his brother-in-law.
"Tough Luck" is mostly about Sid Luckman's career with the Bears - beginning in 1939 and ending in 1950 - and his winning of games by using the new "T formation" offense. The other parts are equally about the Mob in both New York and Chicago, and the Luckman family's peripheral place in it. The family owned a trucking firm in New York and evidently was involved in 1930's action. Sid Luckman spent his adult life fearing the connection between his family and Louis "Lepke" Bucholter would come to light, that even his own children didn't know much about Grandpa Meyer or where he ended his life. No one spoke about it and for whatever reason, the press never picked up on the connection between Meyer and Sid. even though the crime and the aftermath made the local press in the late 1930's. By then, Sid was a local hero playing football at Columbia University.
"Tough Luck" is also a look at an iconic figure in Chicago sports history. Sid Luckman lived in a suburb of Chicago - Highland Park - with his family when he retired from playing for the Bears and he became involved in a Chicago-based company. Author Richard Rosen was a near neighbor to the Luckmans and he engaged in a bit of hero-worship over the years. Is Rosen's book too worshipful about Sid Luckman? Certainly Rosen does not include much - if anything - derogatory about Luckman, either on the playing field or off.
RD Rosen's "Tough Luck" is an entertaining read. (I know a fair amount about football and learned a bit about the "T".) I've been reading Rosen for years now - he had a mystery series "Harvey Blissberg" - and has written very good non-fiction, too. The only complaint I have about this book is the font used in the "proof". It's that font that uses "I" instead of "1" when writing numbers and is really, really irritating . I hope the published book changes font. I also assume the final copy will include photographs.
"Tough Luck" is mostly about Sid Luckman's career with the Bears - beginning in 1939 and ending in 1950 - and his winning of games by using the new "T formation" offense. The other parts are equally about the Mob in both New York and Chicago, and the Luckman family's peripheral place in it. The family owned a trucking firm in New York and evidently was involved in 1930's action. Sid Luckman spent his adult life fearing the connection between his family and Louis "Lepke" Bucholter would come to light, that even his own children didn't know much about Grandpa Meyer or where he ended his life. No one spoke about it and for whatever reason, the press never picked up on the connection between Meyer and Sid. even though the crime and the aftermath made the local press in the late 1930's. By then, Sid was a local hero playing football at Columbia University.
"Tough Luck" is also a look at an iconic figure in Chicago sports history. Sid Luckman lived in a suburb of Chicago - Highland Park - with his family when he retired from playing for the Bears and he became involved in a Chicago-based company. Author Richard Rosen was a near neighbor to the Luckmans and he engaged in a bit of hero-worship over the years. Is Rosen's book too worshipful about Sid Luckman? Certainly Rosen does not include much - if anything - derogatory about Luckman, either on the playing field or off.
RD Rosen's "Tough Luck" is an entertaining read. (I know a fair amount about football and learned a bit about the "T".) I've been reading Rosen for years now - he had a mystery series "Harvey Blissberg" - and has written very good non-fiction, too. The only complaint I have about this book is the font used in the "proof". It's that font that uses "I" instead of "1" when writing numbers and is really, really irritating . I hope the published book changes font. I also assume the final copy will include photographs.
September 11, 2019
Sid Luckman was the first NFL quarterback who became a star by throwing passes for yardage and touchdowns. He played for one of the glamorous franchises of the time, George Halas’ Chicago Bears. He was the starting quarterback in the most lopsided championship game in football history when his Bears defeated the Washington Redskins 73-0 in the 1040 championship game. Given all this, you would think he had an easy, glorious life.
However, he was keeping a secret for many years - his father was convicted of second degree murder in a Mob-related killing for Meyer Luckman’s trucking firm. Therefore, there was crime in Sid’s family but it was never well publicized. This book uncovers a lot of that secrecy as well as it describes Sid’s football prowess. However, unless the reader is heavily invested in either football or organized crime, the book will be a slow, plodding read as there is a lot of detail about both to[its. It is well researched and author R.D. Rosen shows that he performed painstaking research. The detail is very rich - too rich for this reader as it was jumping between the two topics and Was difficult to follow when broken up like this. It was interesting enough to finish, nbut is recommended for those who have much interest in these two topics.
However, he was keeping a secret for many years - his father was convicted of second degree murder in a Mob-related killing for Meyer Luckman’s trucking firm. Therefore, there was crime in Sid’s family but it was never well publicized. This book uncovers a lot of that secrecy as well as it describes Sid’s football prowess. However, unless the reader is heavily invested in either football or organized crime, the book will be a slow, plodding read as there is a lot of detail about both to[its. It is well researched and author R.D. Rosen shows that he performed painstaking research. The detail is very rich - too rich for this reader as it was jumping between the two topics and Was difficult to follow when broken up like this. It was interesting enough to finish, nbut is recommended for those who have much interest in these two topics.
August 12, 2019
I received a free publisher's advance review copy.
I love football and I love Chicago, so I was interested to read this book. I’m not sorry I did, but it’s not quite what I anticipated.
The legendary quarterback Sid Luckman was the son of mobster Meyer Luckman, who was convicted of murder when Sid was a high school phenom and spent the rest of his life in Sing Sing. As the book description says, the extraordinary thing is that despite the prominence in the news of the Mob, no journalist ever wrote about Sid’s familial connection to it.
And that’s the thing about this book: there apparently was never a connection between Sid Luckman and the Mob, and no evidence that he had any relationship with his father after his conviction, which means that this is a book about two almost completely unrelated topics. One details the case against Meyer Luckman, and presents a history of New York’s Murder, Inc. If you’re interested in Murder Inc., that’s all well and good, but Rosen doesn’t seem to have been able to find anything concrete about even Meyer Luckman’s connection with the Mob. If there’s nothing to connect Sid Luckman with the Mob, and little to connect Meyer, then why am I reading all this stuff about the Mob in a book that’s supposed to be about Sid Luckman?
To enjoy the other thread of the book, you must be a serious football fan. Rosen describes almost every single game of Sid’s in college and with the Chicago Bears. I love football, football history and the Xs and Os, but this was more detail than I really wanted. I was interested in Sid’s history with “Papa Bear” George Halas, and his post-football life, but these are relatively small parts of the book.
I love football and I love Chicago, so I was interested to read this book. I’m not sorry I did, but it’s not quite what I anticipated.
The legendary quarterback Sid Luckman was the son of mobster Meyer Luckman, who was convicted of murder when Sid was a high school phenom and spent the rest of his life in Sing Sing. As the book description says, the extraordinary thing is that despite the prominence in the news of the Mob, no journalist ever wrote about Sid’s familial connection to it.
And that’s the thing about this book: there apparently was never a connection between Sid Luckman and the Mob, and no evidence that he had any relationship with his father after his conviction, which means that this is a book about two almost completely unrelated topics. One details the case against Meyer Luckman, and presents a history of New York’s Murder, Inc. If you’re interested in Murder Inc., that’s all well and good, but Rosen doesn’t seem to have been able to find anything concrete about even Meyer Luckman’s connection with the Mob. If there’s nothing to connect Sid Luckman with the Mob, and little to connect Meyer, then why am I reading all this stuff about the Mob in a book that’s supposed to be about Sid Luckman?
To enjoy the other thread of the book, you must be a serious football fan. Rosen describes almost every single game of Sid’s in college and with the Chicago Bears. I love football, football history and the Xs and Os, but this was more detail than I really wanted. I was interested in Sid’s history with “Papa Bear” George Halas, and his post-football life, but these are relatively small parts of the book.
September 25, 2019
This book combines two of my favorite subject’s football and mafia stories. One begins with Sid Luckman who goes from a Brooklyn kid to Columbia University and then is drafted by the Bears. Halas wanted him for the new T formation offense that was going to be put in place. The author takes you through his childhood and the time of him becoming a Bear and really changing football and quarterbacks from the ’40s and forward. He also weaves in the story of Sid Luckman’s dad who was convicted of murder and sentenced to Sing-Sing. While also showing ties with Louis Buchalter who was also part of Murder Inc. He would become the only mob boss to be executed. The author brings you the reader to the fields of football and the trouble Luckman was having at times getting used to the play calling. Then will take you to the story of the Jewish mob and the troubles that they were causing in New York. Sid Luckman and for the most part the reporters from Chicago would never mention it and whether it was because of Halas or just because the Bears were winning it would never come up. For me someone who likes both I never read anything about those stories about Luckman’s father. I ever read about was the games he played in and who he changed football. He also was the quarterback the day the Bears beat the Redskins 73-0 in the championship game still the largest defeat, though a couple of years later the Redskins would defeat them in the Championship when throughout the year the Bears were the most dominant team. Think of the Patriots now and you get an idea of the Bears from 39 -49 both offense and defense they would lead the league. Being a football fan they had some players who could play in any era Bulldog Turner, George McAfee, Bill Osmanski, Joe Stydahar, I also think Bronko Nagurski could as well but that is just me. I found this book to be a very good read and full of history and football facts that were great. A good book for a Bear fan or just a football fan. I received this book from Netgalley.com I gave it 5 stars. Follow us at www.1rad-readerreviews.com
September 16, 2019
I, for one, really liked this book. It's a fascinating, well-research dive into two disparate topics, but that's also the main fault. Most of the time, when you have alternating chapters, the writing ties together at the end; but here, the link between the mob and Sid Luckman is only at the beginning, and then diverges, and really never ties back together. The mob end just fades away with the execution of of top gangster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, leaving Sid Luckman's dad far in the rear-view mirror. If this is what it took to gather enough material for a biography of Sid Luckman, I don't mind too much, but I know some readers will find this structure frustrating.
Also, I don't want to spoil too much here, but there's an incredible, minor "ironing board" anecdote about the Luckman family that could sustain a whole Alice McDermott novel or something. A real gem.
Also, I don't want to spoil too much here, but there's an incredible, minor "ironing board" anecdote about the Luckman family that could sustain a whole Alice McDermott novel or something. A real gem.
September 23, 2025
Review of Tough Luck by R. D. Rosen – ★★★★☆
As a lifelong Chicago Bears fan steeped in midnight blue and orange, I really enjoyed Tough Luck. R. D. Rosen has written a solid biography of Sid Luckman, one of the great quarterbacks of the early NFL and a true fixture in Chicago and along the North Shore. Growing up in Lake Forest, just north of Sid’s home in Highland Park, I felt an extra personal connection to the story.
Some of my favorite moments in the book were the stories of Luckman carousing with legendary columnist Irv Kupcinet, and rubbing shoulders with icons like Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. Classics! These glimpses of Luckman off the field brought real color and personality to a man often remembered only for his accomplishments on it.
Rosen also dives deep into the darker side of Luckman’s family history—most notably his father’s shocking crime and connections to Murder Inc. While that part of the story was fascinating, I would have liked a bit more emphasis on Sid’s Bears career—the games, the strategy, and his huge role in shaping modern football.
Still, Tough Luck succeeds in capturing both the triumphs and the complexities of Sid Luckman’s life. For fans of football history and Chicago lore, it’s a rewarding read. I came away with a deeper respect for Luckman as both a player and a person, even if I was left wanting a bit more football and a little less crime drama.
Oh, by the way, the Bears rocked the Cowboys 31-14 for their first win of the 2025 season. Here is hoping that Calab Williams will be our new Sid Luckman!! Go Bears!!
As a lifelong Chicago Bears fan steeped in midnight blue and orange, I really enjoyed Tough Luck. R. D. Rosen has written a solid biography of Sid Luckman, one of the great quarterbacks of the early NFL and a true fixture in Chicago and along the North Shore. Growing up in Lake Forest, just north of Sid’s home in Highland Park, I felt an extra personal connection to the story.
Some of my favorite moments in the book were the stories of Luckman carousing with legendary columnist Irv Kupcinet, and rubbing shoulders with icons like Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra. Classics! These glimpses of Luckman off the field brought real color and personality to a man often remembered only for his accomplishments on it.
Rosen also dives deep into the darker side of Luckman’s family history—most notably his father’s shocking crime and connections to Murder Inc. While that part of the story was fascinating, I would have liked a bit more emphasis on Sid’s Bears career—the games, the strategy, and his huge role in shaping modern football.
Still, Tough Luck succeeds in capturing both the triumphs and the complexities of Sid Luckman’s life. For fans of football history and Chicago lore, it’s a rewarding read. I came away with a deeper respect for Luckman as both a player and a person, even if I was left wanting a bit more football and a little less crime drama.
Oh, by the way, the Bears rocked the Cowboys 31-14 for their first win of the 2025 season. Here is hoping that Calab Williams will be our new Sid Luckman!! Go Bears!!
May 1, 2020
Tough Luck: Sid Luckman, Murder, Inc., and the Rise of the Modern NFL by R.D. Rosen tells the true story of a football player and his family's dark happenings. Based on extensive research, Tough Luck reveals the shady family dealings and tells the story of the beginnings of the NFL and a football legend. Crime, football and secrets make up this fascinating look at NFL history!
September 21, 2025
The biography of Sid Luckman and his rise to fame from the home of a Brooklyn Jewish mobster to the heights of the NFL and the Chicago Bears...Just wonderful, even though my family owns three shares of the Green Bay Packers!!
April 28, 2022
Interesting sports/mob crossover story come to life; certainly one I wasn’t infinitely familiar with. A few redundancies and inaccuracies but overall, it’s mostly well-told and kind of sad, though it does seem like Sid Luckman turned out okay.
August 11, 2019
Tough Luck by R.D. Rosen isn't so much of a biography as it is a revision. Any appreciation to old time football pre-World War II will require an understanding of the importance of Sid Luckman. One of the first professional success stories of using the forward pass, Sid Luckman put up NFL passing stats for the Chicago Bears that would arouse the most stingy of fantasy football owners, even by 2019 standards. Luckman threw 400 yard and 7 passing TD games regularly when such things were the thoughts of pure witchcraft. Sid Luckman helped make modern football what it is today, and a little bit of every long TD thrown in this era should be held in tribute to his time in the game. By combining that incredible physical ability with his firm but charming charisma, Luckman was a marble man in his profession up until the day he died. As you can imagine, such an immortal personality from that time would yield an upchuckian caliber of cheesy comparisons to American folklore as the Jewish kid from Brooklyn who makes good. And while Luckman himself may have lived up to this standard in his own way, his family life before football has somehow been washed away from history. Enter then, the concept of Rosen's book. You can't really tell the story of a man without explaining where he came from, and perhaps some 80 plus years later it's high time we take a look at the whole picture...
Rosen's book isn't so much a biography as it is an assessment of previous coverage and bios of the legendary football icon from decades before. As a kid in Brooklyn, Luckman's family was heavily involved in organized crime. In 1935, when Sid was in high school, a man was found brutally murdered in his family's trucking garage. The long and short of it: Sid Luckman's father was convicted of murder, and a strange chain reaction of events led to an unraveling of one of most notorious crime syndicates in American history, all from this somewhat arbitrary moment in the Luckman garage. It's worth stating again that Sid, the subject of football lore, was not a known factor in this criminal underworld, but the sheer proximity of it alone would be enough to sensationalize even the most straight laced of sports stories in 2019. The more Sid Luckman captured the imagination of the budding football world, the less people seemed to remember the connection to the brutalities known of his relatives. The book delivers this message in a satisfying structure that alternates between the well known football immortality and the less known hard truths that Sid himself seemed so determined to make better from. For every notation to the NFL record books comes an examination of the political wrangling and media power that affected not only organized crime but professional sports as well. While some chapters detail the comprehensive history of the T Formation offensive playbook, the next may cover New York D.A.'s and US presidential cabinet members fighting for compromise over mob-rule and racketeering, in no less passion or detail from the author. The back and forth structure adds a level of immersion for the reader as we can identify with Sid Luckman’s own struggles to juggle the fledgling glories of pro football while having a foot in the criminal underworld becomes America’s latest fascination, all the while his own father rots in Sing-Sing for murder.
Verdict: Tough Luck by R.D. Rosen is a brilliantly detailed examination of one of old time pro football’s most important characters, and shines a light on the conflicting public and private life that was nearly lost to history. The author covers ground in both football history as well as organized criminal history that have never been so keenly matched together in such a style of writing. The story is entertaining as well as informative, as it feels for the first time in nearly 100 years, every stone on Luckman has finally been turned. Whether you want to learn about Sid Luckman, the T Formation, the mafia, or even just some history about pre-war sports...this book is altogether a must read. Now more than ever, there is room for truth in our world, and thankfully it’s never too late to tell the whole story.
Special thanks to Grove Atlantic for supplying an advance copy of Tough Luck to TehBen.com for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
(Review to be posted to tehben.com on September 3rd, 2019)
Rosen's book isn't so much a biography as it is an assessment of previous coverage and bios of the legendary football icon from decades before. As a kid in Brooklyn, Luckman's family was heavily involved in organized crime. In 1935, when Sid was in high school, a man was found brutally murdered in his family's trucking garage. The long and short of it: Sid Luckman's father was convicted of murder, and a strange chain reaction of events led to an unraveling of one of most notorious crime syndicates in American history, all from this somewhat arbitrary moment in the Luckman garage. It's worth stating again that Sid, the subject of football lore, was not a known factor in this criminal underworld, but the sheer proximity of it alone would be enough to sensationalize even the most straight laced of sports stories in 2019. The more Sid Luckman captured the imagination of the budding football world, the less people seemed to remember the connection to the brutalities known of his relatives. The book delivers this message in a satisfying structure that alternates between the well known football immortality and the less known hard truths that Sid himself seemed so determined to make better from. For every notation to the NFL record books comes an examination of the political wrangling and media power that affected not only organized crime but professional sports as well. While some chapters detail the comprehensive history of the T Formation offensive playbook, the next may cover New York D.A.'s and US presidential cabinet members fighting for compromise over mob-rule and racketeering, in no less passion or detail from the author. The back and forth structure adds a level of immersion for the reader as we can identify with Sid Luckman’s own struggles to juggle the fledgling glories of pro football while having a foot in the criminal underworld becomes America’s latest fascination, all the while his own father rots in Sing-Sing for murder.
Verdict: Tough Luck by R.D. Rosen is a brilliantly detailed examination of one of old time pro football’s most important characters, and shines a light on the conflicting public and private life that was nearly lost to history. The author covers ground in both football history as well as organized criminal history that have never been so keenly matched together in such a style of writing. The story is entertaining as well as informative, as it feels for the first time in nearly 100 years, every stone on Luckman has finally been turned. Whether you want to learn about Sid Luckman, the T Formation, the mafia, or even just some history about pre-war sports...this book is altogether a must read. Now more than ever, there is room for truth in our world, and thankfully it’s never too late to tell the whole story.
Special thanks to Grove Atlantic for supplying an advance copy of Tough Luck to TehBen.com for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
(Review to be posted to tehben.com on September 3rd, 2019)
July 13, 2019
This book combines stories of football and organized crime, mostly during the 1930s and 1940s. That combination was not because of any influence on the NFL by the mafia; but because Sid Luckman's father was involved in a mafia type murder of his brother-in-law, while his son was still in school. Unlike his father, the younger Mr. Luckman was a modest straight arrow, who went on to become a legendary quarterback for the Chicago Bears. The biography parts about Sid Luckman were somewhat superficial, in my opinion, and the organized crime parts were nothing new. Hence, I'd recommend this book only to football fans.
(Note:I received a free ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)
(Note:I received a free ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)
August 5, 2025
Excellent tale of the unusual and forgotten background of one of pro football's first great players. I'd been aware of Sid Luckman as the QB of the great Bears teams of the 1940s and the way he led them in decimating Washington by a score of 73-0 in a championship game. And I knew he was considered the 2nd-best QB of his era, after Washington's Sammy Baugh. But that was about it. This book tells pulls out of the depths a hidden story that's as remarkable as the way the game has changed since those early days.
Sidney Luckman was the son of Jewish immigrants who grew up in Brooklyn just after WWII. He was a star athlete, especially football and baseball. Baseball was the primary team sport in the nation at the time, whereas football and basketball were afterthoughts. But Sid Luckman was best at football, mostly as a runner who gained headlines as a high schooler in New York. He went to Columbia Univ., which was a competitive team at the time, and had a decent career. But he caught coaches' eyes at every level for skills that weren't always easy to discern -- smarts, quickness, adaptability, confidence. Nobody threw the ball a lot, and so while he threw accurately, it wasn't a big deal at a time when a QB might throw 6 times in a game. More important was the QB being a blocker and not fumbling the ball.
Anyway, right at the exact time that he's being courted by Columbia, Luckman's father is arrested for murder. Not just any murder, but an organized crime brutal slaying of his own brother-in-law.
Sid Luckman's dad was in the Jewish mafia that controlled the trucking industry, gambling, and numerous other things, and he was sort of a mid-level enforcer and collector of protection payments. When his brother-in-law skimmed payments in order to pay off his own gambling debts, Meyer Luckman had him killed. Helped kill him, most likely.
The trial was front-page news, and Sid Luckman's great athletic career was discussed in contrast. Meyer Luckman was convicted, sent to Sing Sing while Sid was in college, and never saw his son play a collegiate or pro game. Meanwhile, Sid and his family tried to erase the stain from the family history, and do so with such success that basically none of Luckman's associates or family knew about it. This book brings that entire situation back to light.
When I saw nobody knew, well, at the time of course a few people knew. Everyone knew when it happened, including Luckman's college coach (Leo Little) and the owner of the Chicago Bears (George Halas) who drafted him. But they stopped talking about it, and Luckman never mentioned it, and sportswriters showed discretion (perhaps for the better in this rare situation), and it was forgotten. Sid tried quietly for years to have his dad's sentence commuted or shortened, but it was the era when the law finally cracked down on Murder, Inc., and nobody was inclined to grant mercy. Meyer Luckman died of heart disease in jail.
And Luckman's career took off. The Bears were a very good team when he was drafted, but Halas was an innovator, and he wanted more. He didn't want to just win by running the ball 50 times a game for 160 yards, with 6 or 7 guys on each side of the line pushing and biting each other. He'd heard and seen innovative offenses with more deception in the backfield, more quickness, and more passing, and he wanted that. It was called the T Formation, and Halas had found in Luckman a QB who could handle its intricacies. So he hired the foremost developer of the T, George O'Shaunassy who was a Univ. Chicago, and Luckman learned it. By his second season, he and a coterie of elusive runners and receivers were fine-tuned, and that's when the beat Washington 73-0 and put the T Formation on the map. Teams at every level started installing it, and the game began to open up creatively (and, remarkably, Halas spent several offseasons with Luckman traveling the country to show it to other teams, even future opponents).
The football coverage is good, and it reminds the reader how different the game was in the 1940s. This author does a good job of skimming over that stuff while providing enough detail. If you want more, he references a dozen books about football's early days. But to give a couple examples. You could not substitute a player at any time in a quarter. In other words, all 11 players on offense had to play on defense as well for the entire quarter. Thus, you had to pick players based on their versatility, rather than on a single skill. Another example is how limited passing was in those days, usually a desperation move until the Halas Bears showed how it could open up the game for more running and also be a weapon of its own. Even Sammy Baugh and Washington used old-style plays, and it was only Baugh's greatness that created a passing attack. For the football fan, these parts of the book will be engaging.
And so it went for the 1940s. The Bears were great pretty much every year, and then won three championships, or maybe four. They always had winning records and were at the top or 2nd in scoring. Luckman set some game passing records (7 TD passes, etc.) and had sparkling stats for that era, though they would be laughably bad today. And he became one of the most revered athletes in the country, certainly in his adopted Chicago. It was a charmed life, with friendships with Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra (other guys with Mafia ties, not coincidentally), immense wealth, off-season business ventures, nice suits, lovely women, etc. And unlike those other heroes, apparently Luckman was a nice guy, the nicest. He was financially generous as an investor in restaurants, helping immigrants like his parents, gave out $100 bills like they were lollipops, and picked up every check. And that's how he lived until his death in his 80s.
It's a lovely story, and the author chooses not to dwell on whatever negatives there were, such as likely lots of fooling around on endless travel for business and on the banquet circuit. The author mentions many organized crime figures who were crucial in football's early decades, as it seems half the teams were started and owned by bookmakers. And of course Luckman was hiding what he considered a shameful family association. The author references the above and speculates about how Luckman must have felt towards his dad, who he apparently always felt was innocent despite the overwhelming evidence. And he wonders if Luckman's endless generosity was an attempt to compensate for his father's wrongs, as well as living to the Jewish ideal of tikkun olam, or redeeming the world. I found the coverage of this material to be a little on the hagiographic side, but interesting enough, and I think the author did a phenomenal job of digging up information that has been hidden for decades and, as he notes in the end, was not recorded by any family member in a diary, memoir, etc. He did speak with two of Luckman's children late in their lives, but keep in mind that they weren't even told about Meyer Luckman by their father, ever. Luckman's mom, Meyer's wife, told one granddaughter, and she told her brother, but the wife wouldn't speak about it to anyone. After the trial, she never saw Meyer again, basically pretended he had died --- which was what Luckman told people about his father, falsely, for years.
Such an American tale. Immigrants. Deprivation. Striving. Violence. Talent. Fame. Shame. And football.
Sidney Luckman was the son of Jewish immigrants who grew up in Brooklyn just after WWII. He was a star athlete, especially football and baseball. Baseball was the primary team sport in the nation at the time, whereas football and basketball were afterthoughts. But Sid Luckman was best at football, mostly as a runner who gained headlines as a high schooler in New York. He went to Columbia Univ., which was a competitive team at the time, and had a decent career. But he caught coaches' eyes at every level for skills that weren't always easy to discern -- smarts, quickness, adaptability, confidence. Nobody threw the ball a lot, and so while he threw accurately, it wasn't a big deal at a time when a QB might throw 6 times in a game. More important was the QB being a blocker and not fumbling the ball.
Anyway, right at the exact time that he's being courted by Columbia, Luckman's father is arrested for murder. Not just any murder, but an organized crime brutal slaying of his own brother-in-law.
Sid Luckman's dad was in the Jewish mafia that controlled the trucking industry, gambling, and numerous other things, and he was sort of a mid-level enforcer and collector of protection payments. When his brother-in-law skimmed payments in order to pay off his own gambling debts, Meyer Luckman had him killed. Helped kill him, most likely.
The trial was front-page news, and Sid Luckman's great athletic career was discussed in contrast. Meyer Luckman was convicted, sent to Sing Sing while Sid was in college, and never saw his son play a collegiate or pro game. Meanwhile, Sid and his family tried to erase the stain from the family history, and do so with such success that basically none of Luckman's associates or family knew about it. This book brings that entire situation back to light.
When I saw nobody knew, well, at the time of course a few people knew. Everyone knew when it happened, including Luckman's college coach (Leo Little) and the owner of the Chicago Bears (George Halas) who drafted him. But they stopped talking about it, and Luckman never mentioned it, and sportswriters showed discretion (perhaps for the better in this rare situation), and it was forgotten. Sid tried quietly for years to have his dad's sentence commuted or shortened, but it was the era when the law finally cracked down on Murder, Inc., and nobody was inclined to grant mercy. Meyer Luckman died of heart disease in jail.
And Luckman's career took off. The Bears were a very good team when he was drafted, but Halas was an innovator, and he wanted more. He didn't want to just win by running the ball 50 times a game for 160 yards, with 6 or 7 guys on each side of the line pushing and biting each other. He'd heard and seen innovative offenses with more deception in the backfield, more quickness, and more passing, and he wanted that. It was called the T Formation, and Halas had found in Luckman a QB who could handle its intricacies. So he hired the foremost developer of the T, George O'Shaunassy who was a Univ. Chicago, and Luckman learned it. By his second season, he and a coterie of elusive runners and receivers were fine-tuned, and that's when the beat Washington 73-0 and put the T Formation on the map. Teams at every level started installing it, and the game began to open up creatively (and, remarkably, Halas spent several offseasons with Luckman traveling the country to show it to other teams, even future opponents).
The football coverage is good, and it reminds the reader how different the game was in the 1940s. This author does a good job of skimming over that stuff while providing enough detail. If you want more, he references a dozen books about football's early days. But to give a couple examples. You could not substitute a player at any time in a quarter. In other words, all 11 players on offense had to play on defense as well for the entire quarter. Thus, you had to pick players based on their versatility, rather than on a single skill. Another example is how limited passing was in those days, usually a desperation move until the Halas Bears showed how it could open up the game for more running and also be a weapon of its own. Even Sammy Baugh and Washington used old-style plays, and it was only Baugh's greatness that created a passing attack. For the football fan, these parts of the book will be engaging.
And so it went for the 1940s. The Bears were great pretty much every year, and then won three championships, or maybe four. They always had winning records and were at the top or 2nd in scoring. Luckman set some game passing records (7 TD passes, etc.) and had sparkling stats for that era, though they would be laughably bad today. And he became one of the most revered athletes in the country, certainly in his adopted Chicago. It was a charmed life, with friendships with Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra (other guys with Mafia ties, not coincidentally), immense wealth, off-season business ventures, nice suits, lovely women, etc. And unlike those other heroes, apparently Luckman was a nice guy, the nicest. He was financially generous as an investor in restaurants, helping immigrants like his parents, gave out $100 bills like they were lollipops, and picked up every check. And that's how he lived until his death in his 80s.
It's a lovely story, and the author chooses not to dwell on whatever negatives there were, such as likely lots of fooling around on endless travel for business and on the banquet circuit. The author mentions many organized crime figures who were crucial in football's early decades, as it seems half the teams were started and owned by bookmakers. And of course Luckman was hiding what he considered a shameful family association. The author references the above and speculates about how Luckman must have felt towards his dad, who he apparently always felt was innocent despite the overwhelming evidence. And he wonders if Luckman's endless generosity was an attempt to compensate for his father's wrongs, as well as living to the Jewish ideal of tikkun olam, or redeeming the world. I found the coverage of this material to be a little on the hagiographic side, but interesting enough, and I think the author did a phenomenal job of digging up information that has been hidden for decades and, as he notes in the end, was not recorded by any family member in a diary, memoir, etc. He did speak with two of Luckman's children late in their lives, but keep in mind that they weren't even told about Meyer Luckman by their father, ever. Luckman's mom, Meyer's wife, told one granddaughter, and she told her brother, but the wife wouldn't speak about it to anyone. After the trial, she never saw Meyer again, basically pretended he had died --- which was what Luckman told people about his father, falsely, for years.
Such an American tale. Immigrants. Deprivation. Striving. Violence. Talent. Fame. Shame. And football.
February 25, 2020
“Tough Luck: Sid Luckman, Murder Inc, and the rise of the modern NFL,” by R. D. Rosen (Atlantic Monthly, 2019). Of course I had heard of Sid Luckman—some kind of star football player and Jewish, back in the leather helmet days. Woot Woot. Turns out his story was verrry interesting. Not just that he was a superstar, some of whose records still stand; in Columbia he played under the legendary Lou Little; with the Bears in Chicago, it was he under George Halas who made the T-formation standard until things got so very complicated in the late ‘60s; that he was movie-star handsome, and gregarious, and beloved, etc. But his father, Meyer Luckman, was a gunsel who killed people for Murder Inc., during the days of the Jewish gangster. While Luckman the younger was winning games and headlines, Luckman the elder was wasting away at Sing Sing. The murder M. Luckman was convicted for was a particularly gruesome affair, and was in the headlines for months. His boss (not mafia, so not capo) was Louis Lepke, once a name to conjure dread, and the only organized crime boss ever to be put to death by the law. But the Meyer Luckman case was mostly a New York affair, Sid was in Chicago, and newspaper memories are short. In addition, Sid Luckman wiped his father out of his life. He never mentioned it to anyone. Even today, when biographer Rosen mentions the case to people like former Bills coach Marv Levy, they are astonished. In later life, Luckman---a natural salesman who became very wealthy—palled around with the likes of Frank Sinatra. He lived the classic life of the Jewish retiree in Florida. Rosen does a sterling job recreating the era and the ethos, both of the Brooklyn gangs, and also the development of football and the NFL. Fascinating story. And the title is that rarity, a genuine pun. https://groveatlantic
October 3, 2019
R.D. Rosen has written an enjoyable biography of one of the NFL's early star quarterbacks with Tough Luck, his treatment of the Chicago Bears World War II-era star Sid Luckman.
Luckman is an interesting subject for this type of biography. He grew up in New York City, starred on the gridiron at Columbia, and, befitting the stature of pro football in the years before the second world war, intended to go into the family trucking business until convinced otherwise by George Halas, one of the founding fathers of the NFL. We follow Luckman as he runs the innovative T formation, and helps turn pro football from a constant ground skirmish to a game won and lost through the air.
Luckman's was an interesting story in its own right, but the gangland story of his father murdering his mother's brother allows the author the opening to explore the infamous Murder, Inc organized crime outfit throughout the narrative. Along the way we interact with characters such as Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, Thomas Dewey, Franklin Roosevelt, and Sing Sing prison and its famous electric chair, known as "Old Sparky."
Rosen weaves the stories together well, following the contours of the growth of professional football alongside the depth of influence that organized crime held in the same era. Both stories operate in the perimeter around Luckman, even if- as Rosen demonstrates- Luckman did his best to distance himself from his ignominious family history.
Tough Luck is a good read that fans of the development of pro football, and especially the quarterback position, will enjoy. Thanks to NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.
Luckman is an interesting subject for this type of biography. He grew up in New York City, starred on the gridiron at Columbia, and, befitting the stature of pro football in the years before the second world war, intended to go into the family trucking business until convinced otherwise by George Halas, one of the founding fathers of the NFL. We follow Luckman as he runs the innovative T formation, and helps turn pro football from a constant ground skirmish to a game won and lost through the air.
Luckman's was an interesting story in its own right, but the gangland story of his father murdering his mother's brother allows the author the opening to explore the infamous Murder, Inc organized crime outfit throughout the narrative. Along the way we interact with characters such as Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, Thomas Dewey, Franklin Roosevelt, and Sing Sing prison and its famous electric chair, known as "Old Sparky."
Rosen weaves the stories together well, following the contours of the growth of professional football alongside the depth of influence that organized crime held in the same era. Both stories operate in the perimeter around Luckman, even if- as Rosen demonstrates- Luckman did his best to distance himself from his ignominious family history.
Tough Luck is a good read that fans of the development of pro football, and especially the quarterback position, will enjoy. Thanks to NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.
December 7, 2019
I didn't know what to make of 'Tough Luck: Sid Luckman, Murder, Inc., and the Rise of the Modern NFL'. I mean, with a title like that, what is the book trying to accomplish? When a football team has two quarterbacks which one is the starter? The general conclusion is when a team has two quarterbacks they have no quarterback. The same is true for this book. When a book has three themes it has no theme. Sid Luckman was one of the all-time great Brooklyn schoolboy athletes who went on to become a legendary and groundbreaking NFL quarterback. But the book points out that the fact that his father was convicted of murder and sentenced to time in Sing Sing was seldom mentioned in the newspapers while Luckman played. Luckman of course played in a different era that respected a player's privacy. Then why bring it up and why try to make something of it 70 years later? Why are the topics related? Don't get me wrong, I loved reading about his NFL career and the greats he interacted with: George Halas, Bronko Nagurski, Bulldog Turner. I get a concussion just thinking about them. But the book also talks about the questionable characters Luckman hung around with, Sinatra, gangsters, and crooked politicians. But in the next sentence it talks about what a wonderful man Luckman was, the nice things he did behind the scenes, the amazing generosity he exhibited. A very confusing book. If you're trying to catch a common theme, you're outta luck.
October 14, 2019
This is a completely disparate book. Either the author did not know what he wanted to write or only had enough on two topics to write magazine articles. So he combined them into a book.
Here's the skinny. Sid Luckman's father was a low man on the Murder, Inc. totem pole. He committed a murder only tangentially related to the mob and was convicted. It being the '30s, the press did not report on it as Sid Luckman became a star. That covers the cover of the book. The writer assumes that Sid stayed in touch with him while he was in prison and deduces from a few small facts that he may have tried to get him out of jail early.
The rest of the book is completely separate topics. Half was an overly detailed history of the Chicago Bears, the T formation and Luckman's role in those. You get some play-by-play of games in the late 1930s and 40s, if you care.
The other half is an account of the convictions and appeals of the higher ups of Brooklyn's notorious mob.
The two books never integrated. I gave one star of the football and one for the mob because you can read either. You could only read the football chapters if that is your interest. Or, you can only read the mob chapters and either short book would be mediocre.
The two books are not related except for
Here's the skinny. Sid Luckman's father was a low man on the Murder, Inc. totem pole. He committed a murder only tangentially related to the mob and was convicted. It being the '30s, the press did not report on it as Sid Luckman became a star. That covers the cover of the book. The writer assumes that Sid stayed in touch with him while he was in prison and deduces from a few small facts that he may have tried to get him out of jail early.
The rest of the book is completely separate topics. Half was an overly detailed history of the Chicago Bears, the T formation and Luckman's role in those. You get some play-by-play of games in the late 1930s and 40s, if you care.
The other half is an account of the convictions and appeals of the higher ups of Brooklyn's notorious mob.
The two books never integrated. I gave one star of the football and one for the mob because you can read either. You could only read the football chapters if that is your interest. Or, you can only read the mob chapters and either short book would be mediocre.
The two books are not related except for
December 4, 2019
3.5 Stars Growing up a Bears fan, I had always heard the name Sid Luckman as one of the few "good" quarterbacks the Bears have had, but didn't know much about him. This book serves as a good biography of him and the mostly unknown connection his father had to the mob in the 1930s. In this day of instant news, it's hard to imagine a major sports figure being able to evade that his father is in jail for 2nd degree murder, but it was a different time back then. The author looked into that connection, but then went down the rabbit hole of telling the story of the mob boss his dad worked for being hunted and eventually executed. He also tries to connect the rise of the NFL in this book too, so he looks at the introduction of the T formation (you see this phrase about 8,257 times in the book). I think he tried to do a bit too much and wish he had looked into the rest of Sid's family more. A good read for fans of the Bears and the NFL.
November 7, 2022
The NFL is an interesting league for lots of reasons, and one of them is that you can divide the sport between two broad eras, before and after the Super Bowl. The time before the Super Bowl is little talked about in general, and thanks to constant rule changes and innovation, it is in many ways a different sport. This is one reason why I wanted to pick up this book, although I’ve been a long time fan of the sport I know basically nothing of the early days of leather helmets and guys playing both sides of the ball.
What a story! It is so interesting, and so well told. If you told me there is a book that talks about a sport and the mob I would have guessed it’s a book about gambling but this is so much better. Sid Luckman is a truly fascinating man, and then you add in the story of the Depression-era mob and the men who changed the game of football and you just have an excellent book that is well worth reading.
What a story! It is so interesting, and so well told. If you told me there is a book that talks about a sport and the mob I would have guessed it’s a book about gambling but this is so much better. Sid Luckman is a truly fascinating man, and then you add in the story of the Depression-era mob and the men who changed the game of football and you just have an excellent book that is well worth reading.
December 11, 2023
As a Bears fan and a student of history, I loved this book. But, if you are not one of those things you would probably not enjoy the title as much, if at all. I was very impressed with the author's ability to intermix interviews, stories from research and newspaper accounts of the time period into the narrative of both Sid Luckman and the crime world his father became intertwined into. It is a story that is both tragic and inspirational and I was very impressed with the kind of man Luckman was on and off the field as a competitor. Certainly gave the reader some perspective on the Halas years when the Bears were building a true dynasty. It also begs the question about how Clark Schaughnessy, the assistant coach and architect of the T formation that made the Bears so dominant in the late 1930s and 40s, is not in the Pro Football HOF yet. Well worth the read of any football fan or historian.
October 4, 2019
A few years ago, I read a book called "National Forgotten League" about the early NFL. The most interesting part of it was the story of how Sid Luckman's father went on trial for murder (and was found guilty) - and how that story had been completely written out of his son's story ever since.
Rosen also read that book - he mentions it as his inspiration in the intro - and wrote an entire book on it. The book doesn't really come together. Most of it is a fairly generic sports bio - but with this murder at the beginning. The two parts never really come together, and Rosen doesn't do much with either part of it. Points for a different story in a sports bio, but not many points as it doesn't flow.
Meh.
Rosen also read that book - he mentions it as his inspiration in the intro - and wrote an entire book on it. The book doesn't really come together. Most of it is a fairly generic sports bio - but with this murder at the beginning. The two parts never really come together, and Rosen doesn't do much with either part of it. Points for a different story in a sports bio, but not many points as it doesn't flow.
Meh.
November 25, 2019
This is an interesting enough book when it focuses on the life of Sid Luckman. But, after the initial details of his father's tragic end that today would have been a major news story (imagine if a famous athlete's father was charged with a terrible crime in the world of social media and ESPN News!), the later tidbits about the underworld scene of New York and Chicago seemed peripheral to the story. This was a rather easy read when it stays on its main subject, but when it strays I found myself skimming.
January 3, 2020
This is a wonderful book, and tells the story of one of the most revered Jewish athletes of all time, Sid Luckman. The parallel story of Luckman's father, a convicted murderer who died in Sing Sing prison, is equally compelling, and Rosen brings to life a time in New York history that is long forgotten (as Sid did of his own father's history). This is a must read for any student of the NFL and, of course, for all Jewish fans of Sid Luckman. Thank you R.D. Rosen for bringing to life Sid Luckman. The book is a real mitzvah.
July 6, 2020
(1 1/2). The last two or three chapters really saved this book, where Rosen gets into an in depth and compelling description of how Luckman lived his life after football. Prior to there, we have lots of play by play: games from the early NFL, the New York City mob and the events involving the murder conviction of Luckman’s father, and lots on the Chicago Bears. I enjoyed learning a bit more of the history of George Halas and the end exploration of Luckman but other than that this is pretty snoozy. Ok history reading.
April 20, 2020
I give it 3.5 stars. The dual stories told about Sid’s world and his father’s world are very interesting to read about and the author does a good job of transporting you back to that era. I do feel like the weaving of the two story lines could have been more captivating at times. As a lifelong Bears fan, learning about the greatness of Sid Luckman has left me hoping for another QB to come along to shock the nation, and soon!
September 14, 2021
I love a book that tells me something I didn't know about a familiar subject. I (and many football fans) knew Luckman as a distant legend, but he spent his life hiding from the shadow of his father, a hitman for mobsters whose prison sentence cost him the chance to watch his son play for Columbia or the Chicago Bears. Their stories parallel, leaving a debate how father influenced son (and some of the not-so-well-known deeds son did off the field).
November 4, 2022
I really liked this book TBH. I did not know a lot about Sid Luckman prior to reading this. His dad was a convicted murderer who died in prison and was a huge part of the Jewish mafia. Sid never talked about his father, his kids always thought he passed when Sid was a kid. Sid's relationship with George Halas was amazing to read about and he and Sammy Baugh are credited with the innovation of the forward pass in the NFL.
September 11, 2019
The biographical story of Sid Luckman seems to have been thrown almost as the hook to get people interested enough in the book to buy it since the author really only seem committed to the mob story.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest opinion.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest opinion.
May 3, 2022
I am sad to say that I couldn’t finish this book. And I never do that. It just didn’t captivate me and make me want to keep coming back to it. I made it to about 125 pages, and then bailed. I learned a few interesting aspects of Luckman’s playing career and personal family life. But then it got dry. The author didn’t get me excited about the content.
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