Michael Levine '94

"Dickie, it's Mike Levine, I'm trying to get in touch with Coach Farley. I'm thinking of quitting my job as a lawyer and getting into coaching high school football here in Houston."

"You know coach Farley will think you've lost your mind, right?"

"Yeah, probably, but I'm not happy doing what I do now so I want to do what I love."

"What do your parents think?"

"They've known I wanted to coach for a decade now," said Levine. "My dad once said that every day I'm not coaching is a wasted day in his opinion. Especially when a guy I played against (and beat) all four years at Williams [Eric Mangini of Wesleyan] became head coach of the Jets - at 34 -- it really made me think -- what am I waiting for? I know this is what I was meant to do – it's time to get started."

Not surprisingly, Farley handed out some good advice to his former player.

"I told Michael to make sure his parents and wife were fine with his decision and then I just told him to Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)," said Farley.

Levine was a hard-nosed three-year starter in the Eph defensive backfield, earning All-America honors from the Jewish Post & Opinion as a senior. He graduated with a degree in history from Williams, earned his law degree from the University of Virginia.

Most of Levine's contemporaries at Baker & Botts LLP, where he served as a trial lawyer and engaged in arbitration, were quite surprised at his decision to walk away from such a lucrative job to teach and coach in high school. "They thought I was nuts and they still do," said Levine. "Although my good friends there are mostly jealous. They think they couldn't live on this kind of income. Maybe not, but Laura and I never bought the big house or became big spenders anyway. I wouldn't be a very good rich person."

Levine reports that his former Eph teammates are supportive, if not jealous. "I keep up with a lot of them and they mostly think its pretty cool," said Levine. "I think they can all relate to doing a job that your heart isn't really in, just for the paycheck. Cat [Greg Catanzano '94 now with CherryRoad Technologies in Irvine, CA] in particular -- when he heard what I was doing, he thought for a split second, then said something like, 'will you please talk to Jan' [his wife]?"

Michael's wife, Laura, is behind his career change all the way. "She is very supportive, even with the 75 percent pay cut," said Levine. "We finally realized that all the money in the world doesn't mean a thing if you're miserable. I used to get depressed every Sunday night, thinking about having to go to work the next day. No more."

Michael and Laura met by chance a few years back when Michael was edging away from a scene in a Las Vegas hotel where some of his former Eph teammates were being bothered by a women he did not find the least bit interesting. Fortunately he saw a pretty young woman at a nearby slot machine and struck up a conversation. Two years later when he and Laura returned to the Hard Rock Hotel he proposed at that same slot machine. He even got the hotel to put it on their large billboard. "Garth Brooks: August 29th. Motley Crue: September 11th. Laura - I love you - will you marry me?"

Levine now works longer and harder teaching geometry and coaching football as the defensive coordinator and outside linebacker coach at Westbury HS than he did at Baker Botts LLP, but now he thoroughly enjoys what he is doing. "I do work a LOT harder now, but strangely it's a lot easier for me to do it," said Levine. "I guess because I am enjoying it."

"During a 12-hour work day at Baker Botts, sometimes I would have to check the clock to make sure time hadn't actually started moving backwards," said Levine. "Now I find myself wishing time would slow down a little, because I just don't have enough of it to do everything that needs to be done. I used to have trouble getting to the office by 9 a.m. and was dying to leave by about 6:30 p.m. Now, that's why I work on a Sunday. But don't get me wrong. You don't need to cry for me. When I see what our kids deal with, I count my blessings every day."

Life at Westbury HS in inner city Houston is about as far from life in the Purple Bubble of the Williams College campus as you can get. " We don't have a trainer or a manager or any staff really - the coaches do the laundry, tape the kids, update the website, clean up the locker room, and just about everything else you could imagine," said Levine. "And Westbury is a very poor school, even compared to most other inner city schools, so there is no stability. You never know which player might just not show up for practice. About half of the players ride the METRO bus to school and their contact numbers are inevitably wrong, so that's a real challenge. We don't get much support from the parents or the community either because we have a unique demographic and there's very little school pride."

So what drives Levine? What makes him want to work so hard and so long? It's the kids. “These kids are just so deserving of good teaching and good coaching,” he said. “Truly poor kids are shockingly underserved by our community and the nation as a whole. Even though Laura and I are in debt up to our eyeballs, and we've replaced sushi night with fried chicken night, I get up every day and go to bed each night feeling like I am doing what the Lord would want me to do. You can't beat that. I didn't always feel that way when I was trying to save a million dollars for a multi-billion dollar energy company." How do you put a dollar value on a group of high school students struggling with geometry working together in groups and teaching each other? "Last week one class was working on a worksheet in groups," said Levine. "The whole class was buzzing so I started to tell them to keep it down, when I realized that every one of them - all 32 - was talking about math. The kids who got it were teaching the ones who didn't. It was a beautiful thing."

The Westbury Rebels have around 100 players on their roster and they have some excellent athletes, but in Texas, the home of 'Friday Night Lights,' everyone has good players. The most famous Westbury football graduate among the four that have made it to the NFL is Michael Strahan a defensive lineman with the New York Giants.

On September 1, the Westbury Rebels of Houston took the field against Angleton in Butler Stadium with former lawyer Michael Levine as their defensive coordinator and outside linebacker coach. The Rebels turned the ball over five times (three times inside their own 20) to Angleton and lost, 26-14, but it's all part of the learning process for Levine.