The tax man is trying to sack Bernie Kosar, former Hurricane and NFL star. The Internal Revenue Service filed a $228,806.21 lien -- income tax owed for 2006, according to Broward County records. Kosar is also delinquent on his 2007 property tax for his Weston home, on Paddock Road in Windmill Ranch Estates. He failed to pay $52,724.95 due last March 31 and now owes $59,881.49 with penalties, interest and other charges.

Kosar -- developer, restaurateur, Arena Football team president, and Florida Panthers limited partner -- says the tax bills fell through the cracks. ''I just found out about it.'' He intends to make good.

Kosar, who played for the Browns, Cowboys and Dolphins, went through a contentious split from wife Babette that became final in December. He says some of the tax notices went to his old address. ``When you go through a divorce and you have to switch all the names and all of the paper and all of the accounts, this stuff happens.''

Also, he says, he was busy with the Cleveland Gladiators -- he owns a piece of the team with attorney Jim Ferraro, majority owner and CEO. And Kosar runs Bernie Kosar's Steakhouse in South Miami, amid a battle over money with Dan Harri, his former chef and partner.

Harri says he loaned Kosar and the business $142,612.62, according to a letter to Kosar from Harri's attorney, Timothy Perenich. Harri declared bankruptcy in January.

Kosar says Harri owes him money. They've had terse e-mail exchanges over the past few months.

Harri: ''I have to do what I have to do . . . '' Kosar: ``I trusted and gave you 10 extra chances and still haven't asked what happened with all the early yrs money when we were over 100K per month.''

Harri: ''Kosar Hospitality owes me . . . I have kept very low profile on this.'' Kosar: ``I went way above what I should to help you and you haven't even repaid one thing let alone all the mess and crimes I am cleaning up from you.''

Harri: ''Am available . . . if you would like to discuss.'' Kosar: ``U ungrateful stupid idiot . . . You can rot in hell . . . You aren't even close to professional.''

Kosar's Cleveland lawyer, John Climaco, says Harri and Jacob Kreuzer, a Houston collection agency investigator, are using strongarm tactics. Climaco cites an e-mail that Kreuzer sent to a Kosar assistant, saying Harri planned to ''air a lot of dirty laundry about Bernie's personal life'' to media outlets including ESPN.

Climaco wrote Kreuzer and Perenich: ''Such extortionary threats are not taken lightly'' and warned that Harri could face a defamation suit if he discusses his ''unfounded claims'' with the media.

Harri is now business development director for a Tampa-area plumbing company.

(miamiherald.com)

Just prior to the Gladiator's final game, a playoff loss to the Philadelphia Soul, Lane Adkins spoke to team owner Bernie Kosar about his first year as a CEO of a new Cleveland football team...
Q: Bernie, in your first season as a part-owner and CEO of the AFL's Cleveland Gladiators, what has surprised you the most about the arena game? And how difficult was it for you coming from a successful NFL career to interact with a different type game?

BK: As I told you when I got involved in bringing an arena team to Cleveland, this wasn't about my ego or it being a token type position thing. There is a lot of work involved running an arena league team and I have immersed myself into this feet first.

When we started here my first reaction was to get directly involved with the team itself, but I didn't, I wanted to sit back a bit and take in all the intricacies of the game. I talked with the players and coaches. Players are players and coaches are coaches, that part of the game doesn't change. Once I knew the game, I got much more involved, but not in the meddling type of way, though Mike Wilpolt (head coach) and Brian Partlow (offensive coordinator) may disagree, Kosar said laughingly.

I don't know if anything really surprised me, but the level of expertise and commitment from the team owners to the coaches to the players is extraordinary. I have been around teams that were a family, and it is no different here with us, the Cleveland Gladiators are a family. Head coach Mike Wilpolt has done a great job in his first season as head coach of the team and we are in the hunt.

The atmosphere at an arena league game is phenomenal, the pace of the game is fast, the rules are a little different, but football is football and we are proud of the way the team has played and how the fans have come out to support us.
Q: Making the playoffs and on the verge of something as special, as in fighting for the AFL Championship has to be rewarding to you as an owner to watch this team develop as quickly as it has. What were your realistic thoughts as the season started for this team as it moved from Las Vegas to Cleveland?

BK: We've had our ups and downs as the season has progressed. What we struggled with most was consistency, we are a team with many new faces, but quality people and players. You have to give credit to the job (Mike) Wilpolt and the staff has done, from top to bottom this has been a team effort.

After moving the team from Las Vegas, we knew we could be competitive if we made the right moves with personnel. We made a couple deals to get players we targeted in the draft and we went hard after Raymond Philyaw (starting QB). Ray is one of the best in the game, he is experienced and has been successful in the arena game. It is his experience and leadership that has played a major role in where we are, he is very bright and competitive and knows how to get the job done out there.

From the start we believed this was going to be a good team. We expected to be competitive, and I am not going to sit here and tell you I expected us to be a playoff team, but I did believe it was possible if everything came together. As the season progressed, we began to have aspirations about possibly making the playoffs, we saw the possibilities.The night we clinched a playoff berth at home against Columbus was special for me, the organization and the fans of Cleveland. Without all the hard work of the people in this organization and backing of the fans, I don't know if we could have made it this far this quickly.
Q: In light of the Gladiators quick rise in the AFL, this proves that teams can turn it around in a hurry with solid coaching and talent. Getting ready to face the Philadelphia Soul in the Western Division Championship game this Saturday, what can this team do differently to beat the Soul, a team which defeated the Gladiators twice in the regular season?

BK: We played them twice in the regular season, winning at home and losing on the road. Both were tough, hard-fought games and we feel we should have won both games. We were in position to win that game in Philadelphia but things didn't go our way and we missed a two-point conversion at the end which would have won the game for us.

I feel we match up pretty well with them, they are a very, very good team. They're well coached and very explosive and play defense.. There defense is one of the best we faced during the season and expect to see the very best from them come Saturday in Philadelphia.

If we can play solid defense, not make numerous mental mistakes and capitalize on opportunities, we will be in it. Offensively, we feel good about where we are, but need to play better if we are going to get past them. They pretty much know what we do as a team and we have a feel for them as a team, it is going to boil down to who makes plays and which team doesn't turn the ball over. In this game, a turnover or two can put a team in a deep rut due to the offensive prowess of these teams.

It all comes down to execution.

(cle.scout.com)

Ron Jaworski said he caught part of Bernie Kosar's playoff pep talk in the Gladiators' locker room on cable television recently. "I gotta write some notes for him," said the voluble "Jaws," the ESPN analyst and top football man with the Philadelphia Soul.

Kosar, the president of the relocated and formerly sad-sack Gladiators, has mastered most of the material quickly, pep talks aside. "The game's not going to be won by what's said in the locker room anyway," said Kosar of Saturday's National Conference Arena League Championship Game in Philadelphia.

It once would have been hard to coach for Kosar. He butted heads with the conservative play-calling of Marty Schottenheimer's staff during his glory days with the Browns. Bill Belichick fired him for drawing up a play in the dirt in his last game as a Brown in 1993.

The Browns' story was that Kosar had diminished skills, but his perceived insubordination was a big part of it, too. The play in the dirt, by the way, went for a touchdown.

After some difficult times personally and professionally, Kosar seems rejuvenated by the Gladiators' playoff run to the brink of a title game. Kosar has always had a big ego, which is almost a necessity at the quarterback position in the NFL, as well as one of the finest football brains ever to get knocked around by a blind-side blitz. "I'm not the quietest guy in competitive situations, even if it was in my best interests not to talk too much," he said.

For too long, Kosar was estranged from the Browns by the insecure football men who led the team after its rebirth. But anyone who has heard Kosar deconstruct the Browns' offense on television in exhibition games knows he still sees the field with a wide-angle lens. Exasperation memorably fought with disdain when he watched Maurice Carthon's offense.

But he has grown enough as Gladiators president that, although he sometimes wears a head-set to listen to play calls on the sideline, he lets Coach of the Year Mike Wilpolt and his staff run the game.

He would be a plus for the Browns too, although he would probably have to show more of his developing restraint to ever get a shot. Toward this season's Browns, a team that is supposed to contend for a division championship, Kosar takes the diplomatic approach.

"Derek Anderson threw 29 touchdown passes in his first full year in the league," Kosar said. "You're going to get better if you have a guy like that in your corner. No matter how it comes out with Derek and Brady [Quinn], you need two quarterbacks nowadays."

The compact size of the Arena League field speeds up the decision-making process and accelerates quarterback growth. The quality of play also rose after NFL Europe folded, sending many of its 300 players in search of Arena League jobs.

There were good players in the USFL, some of whom fueled the Browns' rise to power in the 1980s. The Arena League developed former NFL Most Valuable Player Kurt Warner. Even the deplorable XFL provided players to the NFL.

The same should hold for team executives.

"I've been in this five years, and this is my first [conference] championship game. Cleveland did it in one year. Bernie must be doing pretty good," Jaworski said.

(plaindelaer.com)

As fans of the Cleveland Browns can attest, conference championship games have never brought much luck to Bernie Kosar. Despite how well Kosar would play, quarterback counterpart John Elway and the Denver Broncos always found a way to one-up Cleveland and punch a ticket to the Super Bowl.

But 20 and 21 years after "The Fumble" and "The Drive," respectively, Kosar is back in the conference championship game once again -- this time as president of the Cleveland Gladiators of the Arena Football League.

Cleveland will face the Philadelphia Soul on Saturday, July 12, for a chance to play in the Arena Bowl.

Many football people believe conference title games can be just as difficult -- and sometimes more difficult -- to win than championship games. Kosar agreed with that assessment based on personal experience.

"Most people think that if you don't win it all, it's not a success," Kosar said Wednesday via conference call. "But basically you're playing the cream of the crop, the best-type teams [in conference championships]. It's not an accident that I believe us and Philadelphia are still playing. And when you're playing at the highest level, somebody has to lose."

Kosar aims to not come up on the short end in the conference championship again this weekend.

The matchup pits two championship-deprived cities. Philadelphia hasn't won a pro sports title since the 76ers were NBA champions in 1983. Cleveland hasn't won a pro championship since the Browns did it in 1964, before the merger.

Although Elway owns an arena team, he is not standing in Kosar's way this weekend. But former NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski is.

Jaworski is president of the Soul and, like Kosar, also is trying to bring another title to the city in which he once played.

"We really have two cities that are starving for a championship," Jaworski said. "I can speak for Philly, and I know the Cleveland organization feels the same way. We're very proud to represent our cities."

(espn.com)

The first thing Bernie Kosar knew about Arena football was that he didn't know much about the Arena Football League. This was an indoor eight-man game played on a 50-yard field, certainly not his father's football league -- or even anything remotely resembling what Kosar played for the Browns in the 1980s and 1990s.

That's why the former quarterback didn't bring in one of his old NFL buddies to coach the team. And why he wasn't cocky enough to believe he could fix this ailing franchise by himself after he was hired as president of the Cleveland Gladiators, which moved here from Las Vegas after a 2-14 season in the desert.

Today, the Gladiators are 9-7 and in the playoffs after beating Columbus, 47-35, before 14,397 at Quicken Loans Arena Saturday night. It's the most stunning turnaround in the AFL this season.

Yes, Kosar fueled the engine, but he was smart enough to know he needed a lot of help top stay on the right road.

He hired Mike Wilpolt, a veteran AFL defensive coordinator who also played in the league to be head coach-- his experience dating back to 1992.

Next on board came offensive coordinator Brian Partlow, who has coached in the AFL since 2000.

"Bernie lets us coach," said Wilpolt. "We run everything past him. We want to know what he has to say. He is very involved. But he also respects the game and realizes it is really different [from the NFL]."

Kosar sometimes goes into the dressing room at halftime. He has spoken to the team at practice, and is on the headset listening during the games.

But he has found a way to do all that, and not get in the way.

Kosar's other major contribution was to recruit Ray Philyaw, who may not be a household name to Browns fans. But the 33-year-old is one of the best AFL quarterbacks, ever. He's been in the league nine years, and he's 9-for-9 making the playoffs. Kosar bonded with Philyaw during the recruiting visit, having the quarterback stay at Kosar's home in Portage County.

This is a tough league for a newcomer. Just ask former Massillon High and Ohio State quarterback Justin Zwick, who was in town Saturday night with the Columbus Destroyers. He is the team's backup, yet to throw a pass in a game. He gets on the field as part of the kickoff coverage team.

Former NFL players Steve DeBerg (0-5) and Chris Spielman (2-14) struggled when trying to be head coaches in this league, where there are no punts, the field is only 85-feet wide and holding a team under 40 points is like keeping the score under 10 in the NFL.

"It has taken me a while to get to up speed," said Kosar. "I've been learning a lot."

And doing it fast.

Only three players returned from the Las Vegas disaster, Kosar and his coaches changing the roster from one end to the other. A key move was signing Randy Hymes only a month ago. He had played for several NFL teams, but never in this league. Finding a player like that who catches three touchdown passes in his first AFL game is the kind of scouting that transformed this franchise.

Fans have been starting to notice.

The Gladiators entered the night averaging 13,979 fans for their first seven games, ranking fifth in the 17-team league. Tampa Bay leads with 16,636 per game. A year ago, the Gladiators averaged a mere 5,383 while finishing 2-14 in Las Vegas. But that was last year, and thanks to Kosar and his coaches, everything is different now.

(cleveland.com)

When the Cleveland Gladiators take on in-state rival Columbus Destroyers fans of Cleveland's other football team, NFL's Cleveland Browns, will have a reason to attend the Arena Football League game. The Gladiators will honor team President Bernie Kosar, who famously adorned number 19 with his years with the Browns, by giving out bobblehead dolls of the former quarterback.

If you feel that you must get a doll get to the game against Columbus early. Only the first 10,000 fans will be receiving the bobbleheads. The Gladiators take on the Destroyers on June 21st at the Quicken Loans Arena.

(clevelandleader.com)

CLEVELAND -- Bernie Kosar was drawing plays in the dirt with the Browns long before such artwork contributed him to being run out of town by Bill Belichick in 1993.

Never far away from Cleveland football since his rookie year in 1985, Kosar has reinvented himself as part owner and team president of the Cleveland Gladiators in the Arena Football League. Friday night in Quicken Loans Arena, the Gladiators host the Colorado Crush owned by John Elway.

Yeah, that John Elway.

Three times in the late 1980s the Browns and Broncos dueled in the AFC championship game and each time Elway and the Broncos came out on top.

''After 20-some years, you think I would have gotten over it,'' Kosar said during a press conference yesterday. ''I'm not really sure I have. A game two decades ago is still arguably talked about like it happened two weeks ago.

''It's interesting how life goes full-circle from playing to owning and putting the pieces together.''

Elway dashed the Browns' Super Bowl hopes with The Drive in the 1986 championship game. Trailing 20-13 with 5:32 left, he moved the Broncos from the Denver 2 on a 15-play touchdown drive and threw a five-yard touchdown pass to Mark Jackson with 37 seconds left. Rich Karlis kicked a 33-yard game-winning field goal 5:38 into overtime - a kick Browns fans sitting in the closed end of old Cleveland Stadium swear was wide left.

It was in the AFC Championship a year later that Kosar established himself as Supreme Commander of Cleveland football. He posted better numbers in double overtime against the Jets eight days before The Drive, but on Jan. 17, 1988, in Denver, Kosar simply took 10 players on his back and challenged 11 Broncos, as it were, bare-handed.

The Browns trailed 21-3 at halftime. They posted 148 yards of offense and turned the ball over three times. Kosar was 10 of 19 for 110 yards with one interception.

The Browns had 316 yards of offense in the second half. Kosar was 16 of 22 for 256 yards with touchdown passes to Reggie Langhorne, Earnest Byner and Webster Slaughter. Byner also rushed for a touchdown before the bad thing happened.

The Browns were a team transformed, and offensive coordinator Lindy Infante became a mere spectator.

''I was so slow afoot, I had to have the plays right,'' Kosar said Wednesday. ''I remember like it was yesterday - Lindy, midway through the (practice) week, throwing his plays down and saying a couple bleeped words ÔOkay, just call the plays. Forget it!'

''I said, ÔNo, you can call them. But if we're not doing well with them, I'm going to X you. I'm going to tell you right now, while it's calm and quiet in here, I'm going to fake it like you're calling the plays and I'm doing it if we have problems. I hope we don't have problems.' We had arguments in the week leading up to the game about some formational things I didn't think would work. In retrospect, they didn't work.

''By halftime the game plan was scrapped. I was vocal at halftime and mouthy. I wanted to make sure in the second half I was right in what I did.

''It's really a shame a lot of that game is remembered for Earnest and The Fumble, because he was such a phenomenal player and person. He had such a great game that day.''

Trailing 38-31, the Browns were driving for the tying touchdown. But with 1:12 to play, Jeremiah Castille stripped the ball from Earnest Byner at the Denver 3. The Broncos recovered. The heartbreak continued.

Kosar posted better numbers than Elway in the first two AFC title games. The third was all Elway and the Broncos - 37-21 on Jan. 14, 1990.

Beating Elway's team Friday will not ease the pain of the AFC championship losses, but for now it's the game on Kosar's mind.

(zwire.com)

"You guys don't have a Sharpie, do you?" Bernie Kosar asked the surrounding media in the concourse before the Gladiators, the team for which he'll serve as president, CEO, minority owner and head headcase, played their first Arena Football League game Monday at Quicken Loans Arena.

As Browns fans got accustomed to during the former quarterback's career, the tall and lanky one came through.

He got the Sharpie, making the day of a young girl who was waiting for Kosar to sign the back of her No. 20 University of Miami jersey. The girl's father, wearing a Kosar 19 jersey in the familiar brown and orange, could only smile.

The face of the Gladiators - one of Cleveland's most beloved sports figures - sure can draw a crowd. There were 17,391 fans at The Q for Cleveland's first AFL game since the Thunderbolts left town in 1994.

Two decades after drawing up plays in the dirt while 78,000 fans at Cleveland Stadium screamed and pleaded for him to pull off another miracle as quarterback of the Browns, Bernie Kosar has that itch again.

Truth be told, the itch never went away. But now as president and minority owner of the Cleveland Gladiators in the Arena Football League, Kosar has a chance to scratch it.

Before he sat down for a 15-minute interview one day last week at the Gladiators' practice facility in Warrensville Heights, Kosar was in the locker room with his players, breaking down game film just as he did when he played for the Browns from 1985-93. He was as excited as he was during the days he wore No. 19 and strapped on an orange helmet.