Sidney "Sid" Luckman was a legendary quarterback with the Chicago Bears back in the early days of the NFL when players still wore leather helmets. A little known fact is that his father, Meyer Luckman, died in Sing Sing prison while serving 20-years-to-life for the brutal murder of Sid's uncle (Meyer's brother-in-law).

This book follows the two diverging stories of the young kid from Brooklyn who became a sports legend and the father whose criminal behavior led to an investigation into corruption that eventually brought about the downfall of Jewish mobster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, labor racketeer and head of the infamous association of killers known as Murder, Inc.

The actual story of Meyer Luckman, which Sid rarely mentioned during his lifetime, doesn't take up much room in the book for the simple reason that there isn't all that much surviving information. Most of that aspect of the book follows the corruption inquiries that eventually led to the wider investigation that resulted in Buchalter receiving a death sentence for murder.

It is my opinion that the story of Meyer Luckman would have been better served as a magazine article. It's basically just a footnote in two much larger stories. He had a famous son and he was a small fish in a large criminal pond. Interesting, intriguing, but incomplete.

Meanwhile Sid's part of the book focuses on football strategies, statistics, and detailed play-by-play descriptions of games (pro and college). It makes for some very dry reading.

If you're the type of football fan who can recite player stats and vital moments of pivotal games from memory then you might really enjoy this book. If the mention of single-wing, double-wing, and T-formations does not get your heart pumping then you may want to give it a pass.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review

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.

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.

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.

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)

I enjoyed this book primarily because of the convergence of Luckman’s life and football career and his familial history and organized crime. The intersection of these worlds makes the book a fascinating read. Plus I grew up in the Chicago suburb Luckman lived in and know some of the same people mentioned in the book. Anyways it’s entertaining. Recommended.