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One month from today, God willing, he'll turn 100. Round numbers don't come any rounder than that, but Marv dismisses all of the hubbub soon to be upon him.

"Oh, it's not that old," he says. "It's just a 1 with two zeros."

These days NFL contracts come with extra zeros, too.

"We were there too soon," says Marv's wife, Fran, as the two lovebirds have themselves a good laugh. They are speaking by phone from their home in Chicago, riffing on each other's lines like an old vaudeville team.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame will throw a birthday party for its oldest living member on Aug. 1, just before the dinner for this year's inductees. The following day, Marv will be front and center onstage at the start of the enshrinement ceremony.

"My daughter and my wife and all the people at the Hall of Fame are arranging all of that," Marv says. "And I take coaching well."

"No, he doesn't," Fran deadpans, and they laugh some more.

Buffalo's own Joe Horrigan is a senior adviser to the Hall of Fame in his 48th year there. The NFL's unofficial historian, he also happens to be an expert in Buffalo sports history聽鈥� and he readily agrees that Marv is Buffalo's most beloved.

"I don't even know who'd be second," Horrigan says. "He scores highly in any way you can think of to measure people by."

At one point the plan for Hall of Fame weekend was to have Marv appear on a TV screen from Chicago, given the difficulties of getting him almost 400 miles to Canton.

"But Marv means too much to the hall, and to the hall of famers," Horrigan says. "He's the poster child for what a hall of famer should be."

Now the plan is to provide a driver and a van to get Marv and Fran to Canton. Think of it as John Maddening their way there. (In fact, the hall has the decommissioned Madden cruiser in its collection.)

"The Hall of Fame had been calling our daughter, Kimberly, and begging her to beg us to come," Fran says. "And Kimberly persuaded her father to go."

It didn't take much. Marv listened to her pitch and pronounced: "I want to spend my 100th with my fellow Hall of Famers."

The plan on induction day is to take him from the air-conditioned museum through underground tunnels to the ceremony at the stadium, where he'll have an elevator to take him to a comfy chair onstage.

"We are mindful of Marv and the August heat in Ohio," Horrigan says.

The plan is for ESPN's Chris Berman to introduce him to kick off the proceedings.

"Then people will shout 鈥楬appy birthday!' or whatever it is they're going to do," Fran says. "And then we're going right home right after that," because the next day Marv has a memorabilia signing in Chicago that he's committed to contractually.

Let's see聽鈥� his party is on Friday, the ceremony is Saturday, and then it's back home for the signings on Sunday, his actual birthday.

"I hope I have this much energy when I'm 200," Marv says.

Last October, not so long after Marv had turned 99, a gaggle of his former Bills players from the Super Bowl era came to Chicago for a two-day celebration. It had taken a year to find a date when so many could come. The photo you see here is from that weekend. The affection in it is easy to see.

"Bruce Smith calls Marv once a month," Fran says. "Jim Kelly texts all the time. They send letters of love and say how he shaped them into men, not just great players."

Marv has heard enough. "OK, Frannie, they're all great guys," he says. "You're going to get penalized for delay of game."

And they laugh some more.

Marv is known for his many Marv-isms聽鈥� like Yogi-isms if Yogi Berra had gone to Harvard聽鈥� and around Western New York we have a favorite one. Marv came up with it extemporaneously at the University of New Mexico just before his first game as a college head coach. You know what鈥檚 coming:

"Where else would you rather be than right here, right now?"

He used it as a rallying cry at every stop along the way since. But in Buffalo, it has come to mean more than just a football stadium before a big game. By now it means Buffalo itself. By now it means ... us.

"We're Talking Proud" was a local ad campaign made famous by the Bills in the early 1980s; it was meant to get Buffalonians to feel good about their city in an era when we were still thin-skinned about civic insults lobbed by out-of-towners.

Nowadays we don't need reminding of how good a place this is. We get to shout it 鈥� were talking loud 鈥� before every game.

Where else would we rather be? Nowhere else but Buffalo, baby.

Marv Levy gave us that.

Happy 100th, Coach.