A walk-on wide receiver for the Minnesota Golden Gophers under Jim Wacker, Levine became a three-year starter and was twice named to the Academic All-Big Ten team.

[2] Before coming to Houston, the St. Paul native coached at Texas State, Auburn, Louisiana Tech, Louisville and the NFL's Carolina Panthers.

[3][4][5] His father, Marvin Levine, worked as a certified public accountant and played big-band trumpet.

[4] Attending Highland Park High School in Saint Paul, Levine finished ranked in the top 10% of his graduating class and was a multi-sport athlete, playing tennis, soccer, basketball, track, baseball and football.

[3][7] As a high school junior, he joined the football team for the first time and played free safety.

[10] During the second game of the 1993 season against Indiana State, Levine started for injured teammate Omar Douglas.

Tony Levine was hired by Houston head coach Kevin Sumlin to be the special teams coordinator in 2008.

He was named interim head football coach of the Cougars immediately after Sumlin left his team for Texas A&M; however, on December 21 — eleven days before the Cougars were due to play in the 2012 TicketCity Bowl — Houston dropped the "interim" from Levine's title and formally named him as the school's 12th head coach.

Levine was named the National Special Teams Coach of the Year by Phil Steele Magazine at the conclusion of the 2016 season.

After Brohm was hired as the new head coach at Purdue after the 2016 season, he brought Levine along to fill the same roles he had at Western Kentucky, with the official announcement made on December 31.

Nonetheless, the skills he practiced as a coach in leadership, recruiting, and player development transferred well to the company's selection process, and he was approved to open a new location five minutes' drive from his home.

While preparing to open his new restaurant, he went through about 700 job candidates before hiring 110 of them—which, by coincidence, is about the same size as a typical playing roster in Division I FBS.

In the Rittenberg story, he made a telling point about the difference between his past life in coaching and his current career, saying, "Yesterday, my cell phone did not ring one time.