Happy Birthday, Coach!
Marv Levy is more than just the winningest head coach in Buffalo Bills history. He is a prime example of a life well lived. Levy, who coached the Bills from midway through the 1986 season to the end of the 1997 season, is set to turn 100 years old this weekend, as he will celebrate his birthday on August 3.
While Levy is best remembered publicly for his tenure with the Bills, a stretch that saw him win a franchise-record 112 games when combining regular-season and playoff games that includes four consecutive trips to the Super Bowl, Levy is more than a football coach. He was stationed at Apalachicola Airfield in Franklin County, FL, during World War II. His unit never deployed to active combat, but Levy served as a meteorologist during his time in the service. Levy advocated tirelessly for recognition of military veterans through sports for the remainder of his career, pushing to recognize those who served before Super Bowl LIV to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Allied victory.
Levy holds a Master’s Degree in English History from Harvard. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English from Coe College. Prior to enrolling at Coe, he was recruited to play football for the Wyoming Cowboys. Given coach Levy’s connection to all of these football programs that aren’t known as power houses, I suppose we should have seen Ryan Fitzpatrick, Fred Jackson, and Josh Allen coming.
Levy’s football coaching career began over 30 years before his stint with Buffalo. He began as a high school coach, leading the St. Louis Country Day School football and basketball teams in 1951 and 1952. He coached the basketball team to a state championship. He left that job to return to his alma mater, Coe, as an assistant for the 1953 and 1954 seasons before being hired at New Mexico as an assistant. He became New Mexico’s head coach in 1958, leading the team to back-to-back 7-3 seasons in 1958 and 1959.
Levy left to take the head coaching job at Cal in 1960, and he gave a familiar name — Bill Walsh, the future Hall of Fame coach of the San Francisco 49ers — his first college job, hiring him as a wide receivers coach. Levy spent four seasons at Cal, going just 8-29-3 over the course of those seasons. He then took the head coaching position at William and Mary — current Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott’s future alma mater — and held that job for five seasons, going 23-25-2 overall and winning a conference title in 1966.
Levy’s first pro coaching gig came in 1969, when he became the kicking coach for the Philadelphia Eagles. He parlayed that into a job as the special teams coach with the Los Angeles Rams the following season, working under famed head coach George Allen (and with future Bills offensive coordinator Ted Marchibroda, who was the offensive backfield coach on that same team). Levy went with Allen to Washington in 1971, and he was still the special teams coordinator in 1972 when they lost the Super Bowl to the undefeated Miami Dolphins.
Levy left Washington to become the head coach of the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League (CFL), compiling a 50-34-4 record in that span when combining regular-season and postseason wins. He led the Alouettes to three Grey Cups, winning two, and he was also named Coach of the Year in 1974. He also met a scout in that span who would play an important role in his future career: Bill Polian.
After his stint north of the border, Levy was hired by the Kansas City Chiefs as their head coach in 1978. Levy’s teams improved in each of his four seasons, starting at a low point of 4-12 and ending with a 9-7 record, albeit without a playoff berth, in 1981. During the strike-shortened 1982 seasons, the Chiefs regressed, finishing 3-6. Levy was fired as head coach after that year, a decision that Hall of Fame owner Lamar Hunt came to regret.
Levy was the coach of the Chicago Blitz in the USFL for the 1984 season, succeeding his former boss, George Allen, and the team struggled to a 5-13 record. In the territorial draft that year, the Blitz were assigned future Bills running back Greg Bell and future Bills punter John Kidd. The Blitz ceased operations following the 1984 season, and Levy was out of football until the Bills, with first-year general manager Bill Polian, called after firing Hank Bullough in 1986. The rest, as they say, is history.
Levy missed three games during the 1995 season after surgery to address prostate cancer. Otherwise, he was on the sidelines for every game the Bills played in my early years as a Bills fan. Levy came back for a two-year stint as general manager in 2006 and 2007, hiring Dick Jauron as head coach. He stepped down at the end of the 2007 season and has put that English degree to good use in the time since, publishing four books.
Of Levy’s memorable quotes, the rallying cry asking “Where would you rather be than right here right now” obviously stands tall, but his perspective on football and its place in life shouldn’t be forgotten, either. Before one of Buffalo’s Super Bowl losses, a reporter asked Levy if it was a must-win game. Levy replied, “No football game is a must-win. World War II was a must-win.”
Thank you, Coach, for your perspective, for your class, for your contributions to the football team that we love so much. Happy 100th Birthday — here’s to many more healthy ones to come!