If a Hollywood scriptwriter were authoring a football movie and needed to conjure up an ideal name for a hard-nosed middle linebacker who breakfasted on nails and quarterbacks, he could do no better than Dick Butkus. Not only was Butkus, who played in the National Football League between 1965 and 1972, the dominant middle linebacker of his era, but he singlehandedly redefined the position. What made him extra-special was his well-earned reputation for being one of the toughest and most feared and revered players ever to play the game. Butkus also brought a high level of intelligence and emotion to the playing field, which only embellished his physical talents.

If the stereotypical quarterback is a pretty boy who comes of age in a sun-drenched Southern California suburb, Butkus' background fits that of the archetypal dirt-in-your-fingernails linebacker or tackle: he grew up on Chicago's South Side, as...