Marvin Lewis’ long-term game plan for football and life

Marvin Lewis leans back in a black chair alongside a long conference table in his office inside Paul Brown Stadium. Football is everywhere, from the scattered papers on the table to the notes on the whiteboard to mementos on his bookshelf.

There’s more. He points out a drawing from Erin Kiernan, a child with a form of muscular dystrophy who Lewis met while he coached in Baltimore, and in an instant he pulls up photos of smiling college students on his computer.

It matters deeply to him. All of it. The game and the world the game brought to his doorstep.

The Cincinnati Bengals are one of only four teams to have reached the NFL postseason each of the last four years. The Marvin Lewis Community Fund has raised $9.8 million through May of this year, with 92 cents on every dollar donated.

To Lewis, that is not a coincidence.

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In the four major American sports leagues, Lewis’ foundation is unique. No other coach has done this, for this long.

Lewis, in turn, asks his players to be more, on the field and off. Be about something, he says. It increases responsibility, accountability, self-respect – successful traits that carry over to victory on Sundays.

“There’s some substance to (my players),” he said. “Which is going to make them more successful people and players. Because there is substance.”

A good offense

Lewis is entering his 13th year with the Bengals, the second-longest head coaching tenure in the NFL. To win, to have brought the franchise to respectability, Lewis felt he had to make the Bengals about something more than football.

“Where you’re at (as a coach), you’re a reflection of the values of that city,” said Bill Cowher, the former Super Bowl-winning head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers who hired Lewis as a linebackers coach in 1992.

“I think what Marvin brought to Cincinnati is he came in there with yes, we want to build a winner and we want to do something consistently, but we also want to make sure that we’re proud of the city we’re in and we can give back to it. I think there is no greater example for anybody in that position of leadership than to lead by example.”

What is easy to see is football, the coaching, and being the public face of fundraising events. For Lewis, that’s what he is about, and they are all one in the same. They represent an infinity symbol of sorts, forever connected, the strength and success of one leading to the same in the others.

To do that, Lewis and his wife Peggy began the community fund and, in 2007, it transitioned into its own nonprofit organization. Lewis credits the late Sharon Thomas, the fund’s first executive director, and its initial board of directors for setting its focus on education.

Through an initiative called “Learning is Cool,” nearly 30,000 students in 71 Cincinnati area schools have been recognized for excelling in academics.

“You’re not really giving them the world, but all of a sudden they’re caring about their grades because they want that little medal,” Peggy Lewis said. “You have to catch them at that age, because when they get older it’s harder to reach them.”

Beyond that, the fund has sent 68 high school students to college with a combined $1.27 million in scholarship money.

All of this is what retired U.S. Appellate Court Judge Nathanial Jones points to when he speaks of the true impact Lewis has had on the lives of children who may have not only lost interest in education, but may have been lost completely along the way.

He looked down at the cover of the fund’s annual report, which features a smiling child.

“That kid is going to make it,” Jones said. “A lot of these other kids, they’re going to make it. To a large extent we can attribute that to the willingness of Marvin to use his celebrity and the celebrity of professional football to convince these kids that there’s no inconsistency or incompatibility between studying hard and playing hard.”

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Teamwork

Congratulations!

We are so excited to welcome you to the family of Marvin Lewis Scholars and will be watching your progress through college with great interest.

It was the start of an email to Kaia Amoah on May 7, 2013 from MLCF executive director Barbara Dundee and in the 90 seconds to read those 26 words, a young woman with the slimmest of options for a life beyond what she knew had, quite literally, just been given a future she had only dreamed of.

There, in the parking of Walnut Hills High School and alone inside of a blue Ford Focus, she says she lost her mind.

Amoah is now a junior at Hampton University in Virginia and will either be saving lives in an emergency room or those of babies born at risk. She has already gained acceptance to the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine.

“I wasn’t totally confident in myself but I guess Marvin Lewis saw some potential in me,” she said. “I can’t thank him enough for seeing my potential.”

Lewis often diminishes his role as the chairman of the fund, instead heaping praise on his staff of seven and on his 11-person board, which includes Judge Jones and former Enquirer publisher Margaret Buchanan.

Such deference draws a smile from those who really know his commitment.

“It’s like having another job,” Peggy Lewis laughed. “I don’t know how he does it. I really don’t know how he does it. The hours are so extremely long. It’s a big commitment.”

Lewis’ coaches and players see this up close, that he walks the talk about being about more than football.

“He backs it up,” said Johnson, who received his degree from Georgia Tech this offseason. “If you can find a way to increase education, or the importance of it, then you’ll see a direct correlation to success and positive outcomes in the community. He’s done a good job of that. I’m glad to be a part of a team that’s got a coach that has that type of influence.”

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Defining winning

Just over a year ago, defensive end Carlos Dunlap started his foundation to help high school student athletes get the help they need to improve test scores to get into college. In May, wide receiver A.J. Green restored his childhood church and turned it into a Boys and Girls Club and study hall, which he named after his late older brother.

Quarterback Andy Dalton and his wife Jordan have their own foundation, as does Johnson. Running back Giovani Bernard built a classroom in Haiti in honor of his late mother, Josette. Countless other Cincinnati Bengals have established deep roots in community work, either locally, or closer to their hometowns.

The players support Lewis and his fund as well as each others’ causes off the field. In the locker room, players from different position groups have bonds beyond the uniform.

“He’s really broadened the scope of being a head coach in the NFL and the definition of being a head coach in the NFL,” said Bengals defensive coordinator Paul Guenther. “He’s really taken it to a whole new level.”

It’s not an easy task to marry the demands on the field with impactful work off it. But the coaches and players recognize its effectiveness – the Bengals are 10 games over .500 in Lewis’ 12 seasons at the helm, and 17 over .500 since 2011.

Now, it does all come down to winning. Lewis knows that. It’s peppered through every conversation – even when discussing a greater sense of purpose. You can’t have the latter without the former in the NFL.

This year, his players have spoken about taking it to the next level, that this can be a special season, one that ends a nearly three-decade long playoff drought. That must happen on the field. But the base to do so has been built.

“That’s the whole goal, to go to the Super Bowl, but off the field, are you helping out others or are you helping out yourself?” said Bengals linebacker Emmanuel Lamur, who wishes to open an orphanage in Haiti.

“When you’re helping out others you’re also helping out yourself as well. You’re going to be blessed for that.”

The long haul

It is incredibly rare for a coach to stay in one city for so long, a fact that has never been lost on Peggy Lewis. Before coming to Cincinnati, the couple moved seven times in 22 years, never staying more than six in any one place.

She clasps her hands together as she reminisces in the sitting room of the couple’s home just north of the city, family photos that have captured graduations and weddings filling the walls and stairwells.

The house feels lived in – even as she laughs that the décor is mishmash of styles from other residences – which is something the Lewis’ have never taken for granted.

“You don’t ever go in it thinking roots – you really don’t,” she said. “You kind of take a breath when you sign, oh, we’ve got three years, oh, we’ve got a two-year contract. You don’t ever relax. It’s just not the business.”

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She allowed herself a laugh, though, noting that it’s been 13 years.

But it’s also why they’ve discussed what could, or should, happen to it once he is no longer the head coach.

If that happens, the college students who are receiving scholarships will continue to do so for their full four years provided they continue to meet the requirements, and the Learning is Cool program would continue through the end of that school year, and possibly longer.

Such inherent volatility is also why the fund was a slow build to what it is now, as opposed to skipping steps along the way.

One could say the same thing about the Bengals on the field.

“You have to give the Brown (family) credit for sticking with what they know is an excellent coach and they see the success he’s had and the culture,” said Brian Billick, who won a Super Bowl in Baltimore in 2000 with Lewis as his defensive coordinator.

“They know what it was before Marvin was there.”

Lewis and his coaches agree that there is more ground to cover, but if steps are to be taken toward a Super Bowl, one foot represents the team on Sundays and the other represents everything else outside of the game.

“There’s more to do,” Lewis said. “We get more young guys every year and more opportunity for them to help give back and shine the light on how to give back.”

It assures that even when his time inside Paul Brown Stadium comes to an end, the strength of the Bengals is no longer just about Marvin Lewis.

“He wanted to do more,” Bengals offensive coordinator Hue Jackson said. “He didn’t want this just to be a one stop and then hop someplace else. He wanted to make it special. He wanted to make it lasting. He wanted to build his legacy here.

“And you look back now and he’s done that.”