College football superstar Joey Bosa of defending NCAA National Champion Ohio State University has a little mob in his blood. Bosa, a 6-foot-6, 275-pound junior defensive end and a projected early first-round NFL Draft pick, is the great grandson of legendary Chicago mafia don, Tony (the Big Tuna) Accardo, the most powerful Midwestern mob boss in American history. Accardo was to organized crime in the rustbelt as Bosa is to college pigskin right now – aka an undisputed force to be reckoned with.
Bosa had 13.5 sacks as a sophomore and led the Big Ten in tackles for losses (21) while earning first-team All-American honors. He grew up in Florida, prepping at storied St. Thomas Aquinas. His great granddad, the savvy and understated Accardo, a protégé of iconic crime lord Al (Scarface) Capone himself, would be proud. Accardo died peacefully in May 1992 at 86 years old, having ruled the Windy City underworld in one capacity or another from the 1940s until his last dying days having never spent a night in prison.
Ohio State (11-1) is currently hoping to sneak into the NCAA college football playoffs. So far through the 2015 season, Bosa, facing constant double-teams, has 45 tackles, (16 for lost yardage), five sacks and 15 quarterback hurries.
Bosa’s dad is John Bosa, a former All-American defensive end at Boston College, who played in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins. His uncle is Eric Kumerow, a retired NFL linebacker who also played for the Dolphins. Both dad and uncle were first-round selections in the NFL Draft. The elder Bosa married Kumerow’s sister, Tony Accardo’s granddaughter, making Joey the Big Tuna’s great grandchild.
Kumerow is the son of one-time NFL center Mike Pyle and Accardo’s daughter Marie as well as the adopted son of mobbed-up former labor union boss Ernie Kumerow, his mom’s second husband. Ernie Kumerow, a star pitcher on the baseball diamond at the University of Illinois, was booted from office representing street and sanitation workers (LIUNA 1001) in the early 2000s for his connections to the Chicago mob’s Southside-Chinatown crew. According to FBI records related to organized crime in the Great Lakes region of the United States, Accardo “appointed” his son-in-law Kumerow to his throne atop the LIUNA.
Tony Accardo circa 1960
Accardo rose in the ranks of the Chicago mafia during Prohibition under the tutelage of Scarface Capone and Capone’s No. 1 enforcer Vincent (Machine Gun Jack) McGurn. He became a capo and leader of the syndicate’s enforcement unit in the 1930s before ascending to the boss’ chair the following decade. His reign was long and was marked by his soldiers’ extreme loyalty.
Insulating himself from legal damage by employing a series of front bosses, acting bosses and street bosses, Accardo was quiet, however, alleged to be incredibly ruthless. After a rouge burglary crew robbed and vandalized his River Forest mansion in January 1978, the nationally-respected and revered don ordered the execution of everyone involved, a bloodletting that neared double digits over the next several months. In the final years of his life, Accardo, nicknamed the Big Tuna for his love of fishing, lived with his daughter Marie and the Kumerows in the high-end Chicagoland suburb of Barrington Hills, Illinois
The post Future High NFL Draft Pick Bosa Sports Mafia Bloodline, Traces Lineage To Historic Chicago Godfather appeared first on The Gangster Report.