Customer Reviews

Marv Levy: Where Else Would You Rather Be?

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This is not another "football book." It's about lessons learned and resiliency! I watched Marv Levy during Berman's Prime Time with a dictionary! And the book is no different - a vocabulary builder, yet easy to read with great humor.

I'm an NFL fan since '72, Seahawks since '76. I watched the Bills' no-huddle race to a 24-0 first quarter lead against the Eagles in 1990 and was blown away! The Levy coached Bills are the most entertaining team in any sport I've ever seen. Should Marv Levy be coaching in the NFL today? Of course he should! How does a team win 4 consecutive Conference Championships? - read the book.

The story brought back memories of my own little league days when I was #12. Even as an adult playing catch it's fun to do "Kelly to Reed."

I would not think any more of NFL Hall of Fame Coach Marv Levy had he won 4 Superbowls. Like the teams he coached and the man himself, this book is a winner!

I devoured this book, alternatively laughing and wiping tears from my eyes. Marv Levy is a rare gem, who deserves all the success for which he's worked so hard. I'd love to see this ageless, brilliant man stalking the sidelines again, screaming four-syllable insults at the referee over blown calls.

Seriously - even if you're on the bench about football you will enjoy this book. Marv is a multi-dimensional guy with a keen wit and he writes in a warm, interesting conversational tone. I definitely recommend this one and in fact am back at Amazon today to purchase several for my friends and family.

Coach Marv Levy is fond of saying that Football doesn't build character, it reveals it. Quite true, and Football has revealed the classy character of this outstanding man and coach. Marv didn't use a ghostwriter. The old Harvard grad wrote this all by himself, and the book is a gem. It's well-written, interesting, warm and witty. The book is a thoroughly enjoyable read, and one doesn't have to be a football fan to savor it. Marv has always been pure class, and his autobiography is the same. It's a winner!

Boy, what a treat !! It sure is nice from time to time to read about the GOOD things of sport. In today's age of NHL greed and lockouts, basketball court violence, off the field player criminal behavior and athlete steroid and drug abuse, we desperately need a change.
Here is a tome which demonstrates the best which sport has to offer. It is not scandalous or looking to sell itself by making shockwaves in the sporting community. Instead, "Where Would You Rather Be..." demonstrates to the reader multiple instances of teamanship, passion, sportsmanship and true athletic "heart."
I will always consider Marv Levy to be one of the best men in American sport. I make this statement not based alone on his professional skills (which as the coach of the Buffalo Bills were tremendous), but mostly by the fiber of his character. I look at Marv in the same light as I would another Buffalo great, Pat LaFontaine. Both men of sport, but greater men of life.
Now we learn that not only can he coach, he is a pretty darn good writer as well. He is well paced, engaging and of course, well versed. Marv has been involved as an on-line sports writer for some time now, and it seems the experience had paid off.
As for the content, any fan of sport would find this a wonderful read. Having grown up myself in the Western New York community, I will never forget those "glory years" (as we refer to them here) of the Buffalo Bills. No team was more entertaining to watch than the red,white and blue. I was a medical student at the time and I remember trying to intensely cram academic material into my head at a breakneck pace all week, just to afford myself 3 hours on a Sunday afternoon to watch the game. During lunch breaks at the University, my brother and I would always be armed with a Buffalo News to see how many impressive stats Jim Kelly or Thurman Thomas had amassed for the week. Fans in this community embraced the team and seldom was one seen without a Bills sweater, bumper sticker, flag or coffee cup. The fans embraced the team not because they were winners, however, but because they were good men.
Marv translates this feeling nicely into his book. It is perhaps felt strongest in his telling of how the fans rallied behind Scott Norwood after his missed kick which would have won the SuperBowl.
You know what, though? I am glad that the Bills lost that first championship. To me, the most enjoyable aspect of following a team is the quest to win, not necessarily the outcome. How the Bills picked themselves up and went to an unprecedented four staight SuperBowls is a greater achievement by itself than winning any particular championship. Sports is often full of really remarkable stories (I'm compelled to say that way at the top is Lance Armstrong and his comeback from cancer to win multiple Tour de France titles) and we should appreciate when instances like this come along.
I srongly recommend buying this book. It would be a wonderful holiday read for any sports fan !! Enjoy.

Recent history has been kind to Marv Levy as the magnificence of having won four consecutive AFC Conference championships is now replacing the earlier bitter pill of lost Superbowls. Marv Levy has become the ceremonial uncle of professional football today. He is to pro football what George Foreman is to pro boxing, the friendly enduring face of a brutal sport.

This is a campfire book, a grown-up bedtime story about a bright young lad from Chicago, one of those lucky folks who got paid to do what he liked. It is a tale remarkably devoid of rancor or regrets but rather a mixture of self-deprecating humor, a bit of self-serving forgetfulness, colorful characters, and the pleasures of the jocular world of organized football. In his preface Levy advises us that his writing style is the re-creation of the pleasures of his memory. Take away the Kansas City Chiefs and he would have had the perfect life.

But before arriving at Kansas City, there were the minor matters of World War II, college, and building a resume. Levy entered the Army Air Corps with the help of a friend who, shall we say, understated Levy's vision impairment. When this problem was later detected, Levy was scratched from pilot training and spent much of the war in Florida as a weather observer. After the war, already in possession of a bachelor's degree from Coe College, Levy began his much heralded graduate work at Harvard. In truth he opted out of the law school in three weeks, choosing instead to earn a masters in history and collecting inspiring anecdotes for use in the Buffalo Bills' locker room years later.

Levy had abandoned law school because of his desire to coach football. After a stint as assistant coach back at Coe for the mighty "Kohawks," Levy over the next fifteen years crafted a highly respectable resume of work as head coach of generally mid-range college football teams, primarily New Mexico, California, and William & Mary. It was a stunning upset of the nation's number one team, Navy, by an undermanned William and Mary crew in 1967 that brought Levy to the attention of NFL, and eventually to the staff of George Allen in Washington as special teams coach.

Levy could not help but be influenced by his Redskins boss. Allen referred to his defensive linemen as "rushers," benched the popular pass-happy Sonny Jurgensen for the workmanlike Billy Kilmer, and played for the least mistakes. A running offense, a veteran opportunistic defense, and juiced up special teams play were his trademarks. Allen seems to have taken to Levy because of the latter's own imaginative thinking about the critical nature of special teams' play, which comprises about 30% of an average NFL game. Moreover, Levy could not have missed how Allen cultivated an image and played the psychological card adroitly.

Levy, a man not without ambition, was anxious to run his own ship, and in 1973 became the head coach of the Montreal Alouettes. Once the flagship of the Canadian Football League, the Alouettes were an artistic, aesthetic, and organizational shipwreck, bedeviled by an atrocious stadium, poor attendance, and impossible weather. Levy guided Montreal to the Grey Cup final in his first year and a league championship the following season. His five successful campaigns in Canada brought an invitation to come back south of the border and take the reins of the young Kansas City Chiefs.

In many ways the Chiefs Levy inherited in 1978 were very much like the present day Chiefs-a potent offense with a porous defense. He also inherited an overbearing club president, Jack Steadman, who did not understand Levy's priority of drafting for defense [Art Still, Mike Bell, Gary Spani, among others], nor his coach's penchant for a tough ground game a la his contemporary "Ground Chuck" Knox. Perhaps reflecting the thinking of his old mentor George Allen, Levy believed that an adequate quarterback could direct the Chiefs, as Billy Kilmer had in Washington. At Kansas City Levy inherited the aging QB Mike Livingston and drafted Clemson's Steve Fuller. Steadman--and Lamar Hunt himself-- created what was probably an unnecessary controversy in their criticisms of the quarterbacking position, a situation aggravated by the arrival of yet another QB, the gunslinger Bill Kenney.

The Chiefs improved, and the defense became stellar, but neither Hunt, Steadman, nor many of the fans were satisfied with a .500 team. Released from the Chiefs in 1982, Levy would always remember how a meddlesome front office and instability at the quarterback position could undermine an otherwise flawless rebuilding program. Thus, when Levy accepted the Buffalo Bills' call in midseason 1986, it is no coincidence that he had already over the years cultivated friendships with owner Ralph Wilson and his executive staff of Bill Polian and John Butler, and that the quarterback situation was quite stable under the maturing Jim Kelly. Clearly a unity of respect and purpose among all levels of Buffalo management marked Levy's years with the Bills and allowed the team to focus entirely on drafting, development, and execution.

Levy assumes that most readers know of the exploits of the Bills in their glory years, and as a rule he paints with a broad red, white, and blue brush. As a history major himself, he has forgotten or omitted some situations that still intrigue knowledgeable observers: his protest of Cincinnati's no huddle offense to the NFL Commissioner prior to the 1988 AFC Championship [a style of play which, ironically, would become the hallmark of the Bills, the K-Gun] or Thurman Thomas's missing helmet episode at the opening of the 1992 Superbowl. But there is self-revelation as well. Levy was over 60 when hired by the Bills; he admits that he had begun to doubt whether he would ever coach again. How could he know then that his best days were yet to come?

I've never really understood what makes a few men achieve such heights. It doesn't seem to matter where they start, they reach the top.

Mark Levy did this in football. He started as the assistant coach of a high school junior varsity team. In only ten years he led the Buffalo Bills to four Super Bowls.

Stories of success like this one can be seen in all areas, movie actors, President Bush, trying to find common elements is difficult.

Education is part of it, Marv Levy went to Harvard, Bush to Yale. But there is more. And whether you likie sports or not, reading this book is well worth your time.

Good read by a great coach! The Buffalo Bills of Marv and Kelly will be more and more appreciated over time as a great football team. Marv and Jim are true hall of famers.

The book is not only about Marv and the Bills but a man with great resiliancy and passion. Marv had a belief about coaching and stuck to it through good teams and bad. He "stayed the course" and his rewards were championships and the hall of fame.

Good job Marv.

This is an absolute must-read for any Buffalo Bills fan, but beyond that, it showcases the good in sports and proves that nice guys don't have to finish last. Despite the fact that this is a long book, you'll wish it didn't end. Marv takes readers along a colorful journey through his remarkable life in football. This is a sports classic, written by a classy and funny coach and gentleman.

Love Marv. I grew up a huge Bills fan, and reading this book was a treat.

I was shocked at the completely incorrect rendition of that final drive that led to Norwood's missed field goal in the very first chapter of the book. Levy summarizes it completely wrong. Anyone who has watched the NFL films 30 min replay of Super Bowl XXV or has seen the rebroadcast of it on the NFL network can see that this is not how the final drive took place. Most of the plays mentioned are incorrect.

For instance, Levy mentions a pass to James Lofton, who gets out of bounds just before the Norwood kick. Not even close! James had one catch for a huge gain in the first quarter and that was it. It was Thurman who last touched the ball and got out of bounds on a draw play just before Kelly spiked it before that infamous miss.
Also, Marv mentions something about not going for a two point conversion in the famous comeback vs. Houston in the 1993 playoffs. The two point conversion wasn't legal in the NFL until the 1994 season, two seasons after this game.

I also wish there would have been more discussion on Super Bowl XXVIII, a 30-13 loss, which was still a great game and competitive into the fourth quarter. One good thing about these Bills teams is that even though two of their four losses were considered "blowouts," they certainly hung in there and were still in striking distance by the time the 4th quarter started in all but SB XXVI vs the Redskins. If anything, their loss in SB XXVI to Washington was the one loss of the four where they were dominated on both sides of the ball and is their worst Super Bowl loss in many fans minds.

Being down by 14 to Dallas in XXVII (31-17) at the start of the 4th quarter wasn't that bad, and if they would have only turned the ball over 7 times (only!!) instead of 9, that game wouldn't have been a tragic 35 point loss. I didn't realize that Kenneth Davis ran for 86 of the Bills 105 rushing yards vs. the number one Dallas defense that year!
Levy does a good job of mentioning some things like this which could be news to a casual fan.

Other than a few fumbles, a dropped pass here, an incomplete pass there, it's a great read for Bills fans. It's definitely not a "wide right" book but more of a Kelly to Reed connection of the past. Marv is truly a hall of famer who is well respected throughout the league. We'll always remember those sideline smiles, rants, and well timed zingers. Thanks Marv.

If one were to look outside of one's immediate family for a role model, Marv Levy would be a wise choice. Marv Levy is not all about football, although he has spent most of his adult life in one capacity or another in the game. His body of work is as a human being, caring for his players and family. In this era when books usually have some axe to grind against those who "done someone wrong," Levy seldom has a bad word about anyone, and any are usually absolved before the end of the paragraph. His book details his life, the good times and bad, the celebrations and defeats, and the fights and absolutions. He is a unique man who has written and interesting and worthwhile book about his experiences, written in a positive light about incidents that helped him grow as a man and a leader. For those looking for a good football book, an inspirational book or inpiration of life, read Marv's book. It's well worth it.