Former Buffalo Bills Coach Marv Levy Shares Insights

Why would Marv Levy choose to spend his Friday night at in Winnetka?

Before Levy, the only coach to take an NFL team to four consecutive Super Bowls, could explain himself, Glencoe’s Bill McGrane did the portrait-painting for him.

“He is one of those people who’s very much the opposite of [the stereotypical, narrowly-focused coach],” said McGrane, a former Chicago Bears official and author himself. “Football is important, but football is not the only thing. I know a lot of coaches. They’re good people. You [Levy] lived a full life. You weren’t isolated in the coach’s office.”

Today, Levy has moved his field of play onto the written page with a new book.

In the footsteps of President Jimmy Carter and “Harry Potter” impresario J. K. Rowling, Levy promoted “Between the Lies,” his third book, but first attempt at fiction, one that the former English and history major had to defer until after the prime of his coaching career with the Buffalo Bills.

Several dozen book lovers and football fans attended the event on Friday with a variety of questions.

Should Paterno have done more?

Levy was asked if Penn State’s Joe Paterno, operating in the privileged, cloistered world of a coaching legend, should have done more to stop alleged child sexual abuse linked to Jerry Sandusky, his former defensive coordinator. As usual, Levy did not march to the beat as the majority.

“My take on Joe Paterno probably differs a little from most that’s being voiced,” he said.  “I do know Joe and I know he was a guy of high principle over the years. His players — highest graduation rate of any. Any Penn State player I coached – high character and principles there. Joe heard after Sandusky left him what had occurred, this heinous thing that’s being investigated. He reported it the next day to his superiors. That’s who he should have reported it to."

“He said he regretted he didn’t do more. Maybe the ‘more’  was going back to his superiors a day or two more and asking, ‘What are we going to do about it?’ I think that maybe Joe, to a degree, should have done more. But I think he’s being scapegoated and treated more harshly than is what his complicity in this matter was.”

In his new book, Levy, who grew up on Chicago’s South Side and now lives in Lincoln Park, draws upon his own experiences to show from the inside-out the life of coaches along with all other football types in a fictional story of the Los Angeles Leopards and Portland Pioneers dueling in the Super Bowl.

“A lot of coaches I know are great family guys,” Levy said. “There is an awareness, but you do get zeroed in. You don’t have many diversions. But I don’t think you close off the world or ethically what’s the right thing to do. I weave that into my book — it is a story about morals, good and bad.”

That said, coaches end up with a laser-sharp focus from July through season’s end.

Seven days a week, 17 hours a day

“A coach can become immersed seven days a week, 17 hours a day, for seven straight months,” Levy said. “I was an assistant to George Allen, who was another man who was so into it. All the men on George Allen’s staff, including me, used to chuckle a bit that George was paranoid that someone was filming his practices or someone was watching him or was bugging his locker room or meeting room.”

Later, Levy told the program attendees his basic themes out of the book were “play hard, play clean, play to win … honor the game.” Well-wishers ranged from former Bears chairman Michael McCaskey and wife Nancy to Highland Park’s Art Salk, 86, Levy’s old South Shore High School football teammate from the early 1940s.

“He wasn’t an outstanding football player,” Salk said. “But he was very calm and low-key.”

And, no, the hero coach of “Between the Lies,” Bobby Russell, is not based on Levy, despite the book jacket’s description of him as “cerebral, steady.” Levy said the character was based on Bobby Ross, an assistant on his Bills staffs.

Octogenarian Levy looks and acts at least a generation younger.

“I do agree that chronological age is only a partial indicator of your functional age.  I’ve taken good care of myself, still exercise, go out for a three-mile walk/run mixed together regularly. I do like writing. I’m finally getting a chance to travel. This year I visited Normandy on D-Day. I visited Belleau Wood, the World War I battle where my father fought and was wounded, an iconic Marine Corps battle. I’ve never been to Greece. My wife is of Greek heritage, so we’re going to be doing some more traveling.”

Does Levy regret he didn’t do the renaissance-man stuff when younger?

“While I was coaching, I just regretted we didn’t make the first down,” he said. “Somewhere in my subconscious I say someday I’m going to do it.”

Never say never to his first love, though.

“Would I coach again? I might.”

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