By Mark Curnutte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

MOBILE, Ala. - As a child growing up in McDonald, Pa., Marvin Roland Lewis Jr. never left the house without first making his bed and straightening up his room. Vanetta Lewis, mother of the Cincinnati Bengals new head coach, can't remember her son ever being unprepared for anything in his life.

"He always did his homework," Mrs. Lewis says from her Pennsylvania home. "He always did his chores without a reminder."

WHAT LEWIS LIKES

• HERO: Former Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente. • FAVORITE BOOK: "I've actually just finished reading three books. The books I read are more to do with direction, success. A lot of them are tie-ins with Biblical things." • LAST MOVIE: Maid in Manhattan starring Jennifer Lopez. • DINNER FAVORITE: "Mexican food. We have a neighbor whose family has an Italian restaurant, so it's one or the other."

Lewis always knew his responsibilities, as well as everyone else's in the household.

And that's the way he will run the Bengals. Signed Tuesday to a five-year contract believed to be worth $1.5 million a season - not including incentives - Lewis inherits a team that has not been to the playoffs since 1990 and is coming off a franchise record 14-loss season.

He will approach the job the same way he has every challenge in his 44 years. He'll work hard and intelligently. He already has a plan and apparently more control than Bengals' fans believe team president Mike Brown would ever yield.

Lewis went to work Tuesday night. He called quarterback Jon Kitna roughly one hour after his news conference. Lewis talked to prospective assistant coaches in the hotel lobby later that night.

In his first 18 hours as Bengals coach, Lewis seems to have centralized power. He was the only team official talking to the media Wednesday. Brown and the rest of his family, including daughter Katie Blackburn, the team's executive vice president, refused media requests for interviews.

Lewis, on the other hand, was talking but not allowing any detail regarding the team's minicamp schedule and off-season conditioning program.

He was evasive of questions about the coaching staff he was piecing together.

"We're going to attend to that all at once," Lewis says. "We'll have some guys coming in this weekend to talk to."

RELATED LINKS

• Tell us what you think about Lewis • Coverage of Lewis' hiring

But it's not power for power's sake that Lewis appears to crave. His organizational skills seem borne from a heightened sense of personal responsibility.

"He thrives on discipline, and I think he will bring that to Cincinnati," says one of his former defensive stars, Baltimore Ravens cornerback Chris McAlister. "He knows his personnel and always puts people in the right situation to succeed. He will make sure his players know their strengths and weaknesses."

Lewis was the Ravens' defensive coordinator for six seasons, a run highlighted by the team's Super Bowl victory after the 2000 season. Lewis' defense allowed an NFL-low 165 points in a 16-game schedule.

Success was the standard from the beginning in the Lewis household. His mother went back to school to become a nurse practitioner. His father was a supervisor and spent 28 years working in a western Pennsylvania steel mill. His youngest sister, Andrea, now 38, is an Allegheny County police officer. His other sibling, Carol Joy, has a degree in electrical engineering and lives outside Akron.

Marvin Lewis was an undersized linebacker at Idaho State. (Photo courtesy of Idaho State University) | ZOOM |

Young Marvin was a success in school and in football. He started playing at age 9 and immediately put his brain to work to make up for his lack of brawn.

"The coaches always said he was like a little coach on the field," Vanetta Lewis says. "He knew all the plays and where everybody else on his team was supposed to be."

He carried his academic and athletic success to Fort Cherry High School.

He played baseball in the summer and worked for his neighbor's garbage-collecting company. He'd work all day and would have just enough time to change in the truck on the way to practice or a game. There was no chance to shower.

His teammates' greeting was always the same: "Oh, Marvin, you stink, man."

He wasn't just a jock, though. He was a good student and a leader. He was the first youth Sunday school superintendent in the history of McDonald's First Baptist Church.

Lewis played quarterback out of necessity at Fort Cherry. He was not the classic, strong-armed, future NFL quarterback such as Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Jim Kelly and Joe Namath, all of whom came out of western Pennsylvania.

Lewis was a good safety, and his knowledge of the game made up for his lack of size.

Jim Garry was Marvin's football coach at Fort Cherry, which also produced another NFL head coach, San Diego's Marty Schottenheimer.

"Marvin gave you everything he had," Garry says.

The budding coach would go to Garry's office throughout the week during study hall and watch film of the upcoming opponent.

"He wanted to make sure he knew what was coming up," Garry says.

Math was his favorite subject, and his analytical ability led him to a decision to walk on as a football player at Purdue University, where he planned to study engineering.

Before Lewis left for West Lafayette, Ind., a family friend found out that Idaho State University had a football scholarship left and wanted to fill it with a top student.

Lewis leapt at the opportunity. The reason: "My parents wouldn't have to pay for anything," he says.

When Lewis arrived on the Pocatello campus, Idaho State officials - not knowing he was African-American - apologized for giving him a white roommate. His reaction: "It doesn't matter. A lot of my friends are white."

"He could assimilate with all kinds of people," says Phil Luckey, head athletic trainer at Idaho State since 1967.

"It was his destiny to come here. Part of his life experience, his diversity skills, if he had missed this experience, he might not be where he is now."

Lewis played linebacker at Idaho State. He earned all-Big Sky Conference honors three consecutive years, and his coach as a senior, Dave Kragthorpe, says the only things that kept Lewis from an NFL playing career were "about 3 or 4 inches and 50 pounds."

Kragthorpe took over a program with a long history of losing, a skid that started to turn during Lewis' senior season.

"I remember one specific game that he played a huge part in: Our first conference road win was at the University of Nevada. Marvin blocked a punt late in the game. We scored and won that game. I thought that was the major turning point in our season. ... It wasn't something called from the bench. It wasn't the coaching staff that saw a weakness and put in this punt block. It was Marvin on his own who decided he could do that based on previous punts.

"It was getting down toward the end of the game, and he realized we had to do something significant to win."

The coach didn't want to lose Lewis' leadership ability and hired him as a graduate assistant before the 1981 season.

The Bengals went 12-1 and won the Division I-AA national championship. (That season also was a good one for another Bengals team, in Cincinnati, which went 12-4 and played in its first Super Bowl.)

Before he earned his master's degree in athletic administration, Lewis was promoted to linebackers coach - which lifted his salary to $10,000.

After the 1984 season, Lewis and his wife, Peggy, packed their Trans Am and headed for Long Beach State. (They have two children - daughter, Whitney, 17, a high school senior; and son, Marcus, 12, a seventh-grader and devoted lacrosse player.)

The next coaching stop was New Mexico. Then it was home to coach linebackers at the University of Pittsburgh in 1990-91. Then rookie Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher made Lewis one of his first hires as linebackers coach.

Lewis is aware of his position as just the third African-American head coach in the NFL and just the eighth in league history. But, when introduced Tuesday night as the Bengals ninth coach, he said he "represented all the coaches who came up the way I did."

That night, civil rights leaders and black ministers welcomed Lewis to Cincinnati and said they hoped he would get involved in helping heal the city's racial wounds.

He will.

"I think that's important for the head coach of the Bengals to do," he says. "We'll be judged as we do as a football team on the field, but, as we bring quality people to Cincinnati, hopefully, we all need to be involved in the community."

E-mail mcurnutte@enquirer.com