Levy, Marvin D.
Football
b. Aug. 3, 1928, Chicago, IL
Levy played football at Coe College, graduating in 1950, and then received a master's degree in English history from Harvard in 1951. After coaching St. Louis Country Day School to a 13-0-1 record in two seasons, he returned to Coe as an assistant football coach. He became an assistant at the University of New Mexico in 1956 and took over as head coach in 1958.
After compiling a 14-6-0 record in two seasons there, he went to the University of California, but was fired in 1964 after winning only 8 games while losing 29 and tying 2. Levy was then hired by William & Mary College, where he had a 23-25-2 record in five seasons.
From 1969 through 1972, Levy served as an assistant NFL coach. He took over the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League in 1973 and guided them to two Grey Cup championships, in 1974 and 1977. His CFL record was 43-31-4 in five seasons.
Levy became head coach of the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs in 1978. He made a respectable team of them, going 9-7-0 in 1981, but was replaced after the Chiefs won only 3 of their first 9 games the following season. After a year out of football, Levy took over the Chicago team in the U. S. Football League, where he had a 5-13-0 record.
That league folded after the 1984 season and Levy spent another year out of football before being hired by the NFL's Buffalo Bills during the 1986 season. He's had his greatest success with Buffalo, guiding the Bills to a 79-39-0 regular season record, an 11-6 record in the playoffs, and four consecutive American Football Conference championships, from 1990 through 1993. However, Buffalo lost all four Super Bowls.
Levy developed the no-huddle offense into a powerful weapon for Buffalo, allowing quarterback Jim Kelly to call his own plays at the line of scrimmage most of the time. The "hurry-up," offense, as it is also called, prevents defenses from making situational substitutions.