The IRS and the creditors and
an angry ex-wife and an avalanche of attorneys are
circling the chaos that used to be Bernie Kosar's
glamorous life, but that's not the source of his
anxiety at the moment. He is doing a labored lap
inside his Weston mansion, the one on the lake
near the equestrian playpen for horses, because he
wants to be sure there are no teenage boys hiding,
attempting to get too close to his three
daughters. He shattered a Kid Rock-autographed
guitar the other day while chasing one teenager
out of his house because he doesn't mind all of
the other boys within the area code thinking the
Kosar girls have an unhinged Dad.
''There are a million doors in this place,'' he says.
``Too many ways to get in.''
So up and down the spiral staircases he goes, a rumpled
mess wearing a wrinkled golf shirt, disheveled graying
hair, and the scars and weariness from a lifetime's
worth of beatings. He has no shoes on, just white socks
with the NFL logo stitched on because he's never really
been able to let go of who he used to be. He is
coughing up phlegm from a sickness he is certain
arrived with all the recent stress of divorce and debt,
and now he doesn't walk so much as wobble his way into
one of the closets upstairs, where he happens upon some
painful, wonderful memories he keeps sealed in a
plastic cup.
His teeth are in there. So is the surgical screw that
finally broke through the skin in his ankle because of
how crooked he walked for years. He broke that ankle in
the first quarter of a game against the Dolphins in
1992; he threw two touchdown passes in the fourth
quarter anyway. Don Shula called him the following day
to salute him on being so tough, but Kosar is paying
for it with every step he takes today on uneven
footing. The old quarterback shakes the rattling cup,
then grins. There are about as many real teeth in the
cup as there are in what remains of his smile.
''I never wore a mouthpiece,'' he says. ``I had to live
and die with my audibles. We played on
pavement/AstroTurf back then. Getting hit by Lawrence
Taylor was only the beginning of the problem.''
So much pain in his life. He heads back downstairs
gingerly.
''I need hip replacement,'' he says.
He pulls his jeans down a bit to reveal the scar from
the surgery to repair his broken back.
''Disks fused together,'' he says.
Concussions?
''A lot,'' he says. ``I don't know how many.''
He holds out all 10 gnarled fingers. ''All of these
have been broken at least once,'' he says. ``Most of
them twice.''
Broke both wrists, too.
The game was fast and muscled. He was neither. He was
always the giraffe trying to survive among lions. Still
is, really. He has merely traded one cutthroat arena in
which people compete for big dollars for another, and
today's is a hell of a lot less fun than the one that
made him famous. More painful, too, oddly enough.
Kosar holds up his left arm and points to the scar on
his elbow.
''Have a cadaver's ligament in there,'' he says.
And that's the good arm. He bends over and lets both
arms hang in front of him. His throwing arm is as
crooked as a boomerang.
''I can't straighten it,'' he says. ``I started
breaking at 30 years old. Once you start breaking, you
keep breaking.''
The doorbell rings. It's his assistant with the papers
he needs to autograph. She puts all the legalese from
four folders in front of him on a coffee table that is
low to the ground. A groaning Kosar, 45, gets down very
slowly onto the rug until he is symbolically on his
hands and knees at the center of what used to be his
glamorous life. And then he signs the documents that
begin the process of filing for bankruptcy.
''Let me tell you something, bro,'' he says. ``It was
all worth it.''
UNTIL THE BITTER END
Brett Favre has made a spectacular
public mess of his career punctuation because of how
very hard it is for even the strongest among us to
leave behind the applause for good. It is difficult for
any man to retire when so much of his identity and
self-worth and validation is tied up in his job, what
he does invariably becoming a lopsided amount of who he
is. But it is especially hard on quarterbacks because
of how much of America's most popular game they
literally hold in their hands. That kind of control --
over other strong men, over huddles, over winning, over
entire swaying stadiums and their surrounding cities --
is just about impossible to let go . . . as is the
attendant attention, ego, importance, popularity, fun
and life. Running backs retire early sometimes because
of the beatings, but quarterbacks never do. Joe Namath
finished wearing a Rams helmet, Joe Montana ended with
the Chiefs after 40, and Dan Marino got pushed out
after losing 62-7 -- and now Favre wanders the earth so
lost and searching that he's about to put on the
uniform of his greatest enemy. Kings don't quit
kingdoms voluntarily.
But there's no preparing you for the silence that comes
after all you've heard is cheering. A quarterback will
never feel more alive anywhere than he does at the
conquering center of everything in sports. His is by
consensus the most difficult job in athletics, and it
requires an obsessive-compulsive attention to detail.
The most diligent and consumed become Peyton Manning
and Tom Brady; the talented and lazy become Ryan Leaf.
And sometimes they sculpt their singular and
all-consuming skill to the detriment of the balance
needed for the rest of life's tacklers. Bills? Errands?
Adulthood? Those things get handed off sometimes
because, whether it is the offensive line or family and
friends huddled around their income source, the
quarterback must always be protected or everyone loses.
ON AND OFF THE FIELD
Kosar was one of the smart ones. He
graduated from the University of Miami in 2 ½ years. He
was smart enough to go a record 308 pass attempts
without an interception. Smart enough to help build
several businesses after football, with a 6 percent
interest in a customer-service outsourcing company that
sold for more than $500 million. Smart enough to have a
wing of the business school at the University of Miami
named after him. But now that the maids and wife are
gone, you know how he feels walking into a grocery
store by himself for the first time?
''Overwhelmed,'' he says.
He is like an embryo in the real world. The huddle gave
him strength and purpose and enough fame and money that
he never had to do much of anything for himself. Never
had to grow, really, as anything but a quarterback. He
says his kids (ages 17, 16, 12 and 9) grew up in a
world where ''their idea of work was telling the maid
to clean their room.'' And even the live-in maids had
assistants. So now they're all trying to figure it out
together, four kids led by a 45-year-old one.
Do you know how to wash clothes, Bernie?
''No,'' he says.
Iron a shirt?
''No,'' he says.
Start the dishwasher?
''No,'' he says.
He just learned the other day, after much trying and
failing, how to make his own coffee. This is a man who
owned his own jet and helped found companies, plural.
But when his new girlfriend came over recently and
found him trying to cook with his daughters, she
couldn't believe what was on the kitchen island to cut
the French bread. A saw.
''I was 25 and everyone was telling me that I was the
smartest; now I'm 45 and realize I'm an idiot,'' he
says. ``I'm 45 and immature. I don't like being 45.''
He still finds himself doodling plays on napkins in the
kitchen. Running companies doesn't feel as rewarding as
working with a high school or college tight end on
routes. The only post-quarterback jobs that have given
him any sort of joy are the ones near football:
broadcasting Cleveland Browns games; running a company
that created football websites and magazines; buying an
Arena Football League team. But it isn't the same. Not
nearly. As he tries to reorganize his life in a dark
period that leaves his mind racing and sleepless, the
people he quotes aren't philosophers and poets. They
are coaches.
Like when he was at the University of Miami, for
example. He was the weakest kid on the team. He was
mortified when his statuesque competition, Vinny
Testaverde, walked onto campus and bench-pressed 325
pounds a bunch of times. Kosar got 185 up just once,
with arms shaking. So he went to Coach Howard
Schnellenberger and, sweating and trying not to
tremble, told him he was going to transfer. And now he
quotes the old pipe-smoking coach and applies those
lessons from nearly three decades ago to today: ``Son,
I'm not going to lie. It doesn't look good for you. But
wherever you go in life, there's competition. The guys
who run home to mommy tend to be quitters their whole
life.''
Kosar won. Won huge. Won the job and the national
championship in a flabbergasting upset of Nebraska to
begin Miami's unprecedented football run through the
next two decades.
That seems like so long ago. As creditors close in and
his divorce has gotten messy in public, Kosar has had
some suicidal thoughts, but he says, 'I couldn't quit
on my kids. I'm not a quitter. I'm not going to quit on
them or me. I got here with hard work. I'll get out of
this with hard work. No wallowing. No `woe is me.' I'm
great at making money. And, as we've found out, I'm
great at spending it. What I'm not great at is managing
it.''
THE PANGS OF LOSS
It is hard to believe he filed a bankruptcy petition on
Friday, but a bad economy, bad advice, a bad divorce
and a bad habit of not being able to say ''no'' have
ravaged him. He says financial advisors he loved and
trusted mismanaged his funds, doing things like losing
$15 million in one quick burst. There's a $4.2 million
judgment against him from one bank. A failed
real-estate project in Tampa involving multi-family
properties. A steakhouse collapsing with a lawsuit. Tax
trouble.
His finances have never been something he controlled.
He graduated on July 14, 1985, was at two-a-day NFL
workouts six days later, and immediately got on the
learning treadmill at full speed, always feeling like
he was catching up because his team wasn't very good;
and his receivers were worse than the ones he had at
UM, and everyone on the other side of the ball was very
fast, and he was very slow, and the only advantage he
would have was being smarter. Dad would handle the
bills; the son had to handle the Bills.
And he was always rewarded for being consumed that way.
That's how the weakest and least physically gifted guy
on the field once threw for 489 yards in an NFL playoff
game. But that huddle eventually breaks, and the men
who formed it break, too. Depression. Drugs. Drinking.
Divorce. You'll find it all as retired football players
cope with the kinds of losses teammates can't help you
with -- a loss of identity, self-worth, youth,
relevance.
A recent Sports Illustrated article estimated that,
within two years of leaving football, an astounding 78
percent of players are either bankrupt or in financial
distress over joblessness and divorce. And over the
years, a lot of those old teammates have asked Kosar to
borrow a hundred grand here, a hundred-fifty grand
there. He knew then that he wouldn't be getting it
back. But, as the quarterback -- always the quarterback
-- you help your teammates up.
How much has he lent teammates over the years without
being repaid?
''Eight figures,'' he says.
Friends and family?
''Eight figures,'' he says.
Charities, while putting nearly 100 kids through school
on scholarships? ``Well over eight figures.''
When it became public earlier this month that the
Panthers hockey team would be sold and that Kosar would
be getting a minority-owner percentage of the $240
million price, his phone rang all weekend with people
asking for help. Calls after midnight on Friday. Calls
before 7 a.m. on Sunday.
''Everyone with a sob story came flooding back,'' he
says. Then there's the divorce. It has been a public
disaster, with him being accused of several addictions,
of erratic behavior and of giving away the couple's
money. Bernie says he has no interest in fighting with
his estranged wife publicly or privately because ''I
can't live vengefully in front of my kids. Why subject
them to that? I don't want to fight anybody. I don't
want hate or anger in their life. I may hurt me, but I
wouldn't hurt anybody else.'' He speaks with a slur and
admits there has been drinking and pain medication in
his past, but says the only thing he's addicted to is
football.
Drugs? Alcohol? ''Would my kids be living with me if
that were really the case?'' he asks. ``If I did 10
percent of things I'm accused of, I'd be dead.''
He says the divorce has cost him between $4 and $5
million already.
''That's just fees,'' he says. ``And they keep coming.
Attorneys charge $600 an hour just to screw things up
more.''
And here's the worst part: ''I don't want to get
divorced,'' he says. ``I'm Catholic, and I'm loyal, and
I still love her.''
CHALLENGES AHEAD
He has poured himself into being Dad,
but it isn't easy. Kids listen more from 2 to 10 years
old. But now there are the perpetual parental concerns
of cars, driving, drinking, drugs, sex.
''I'm outnumbered now,'' he says.
And he has no clue how to help girls become women,
although he gets moved to the brink of tears when his
girls tell him they appreciate how hard he's trying. He
wept like a child when his daughter painted him a
picture of herself smiling and signed it with love. He
has found therapy in learning how to clean the house
with the kids and dealing with life's smaller
headaches. Just the other day, while in a 10-hour
bankruptcy meeting with 10 attorneys that left him
''humbled and in pain and feeling betrayed'' as he took
a detailed inventory of his life, he excused himself
with a smile because one of his daughters -- the oldest
of his children lives with him full time, the others
part time -- was calling with some sort of popularity
crisis.
''The worst feeling in the world is being Dad on Friday
night at home at midnight and they haven't gotten home
yet,'' he says.
His daughter rolled her car the other day, getting
ejected as it sank into a lake.
''Memorial Day, I should have been doing the funeral
for her,'' he says. ``This other chaos is just stuff.
Money. I'll make more. It feels bad. It sucks the life
and energy out of you and is a relentless drain. But
I'm going to come out of this fine. I always get up.''
There are photos all over his mansion. Many of them are
not up. They are on the floor, leaning against the
walls. He'll learn how to hang them soon enough. He
goes over and grabs the one by the fireplace. In it, he
is in the pocket with the Browns, and everything is
collapsing all around him. You can see Kosar's
offensive linemen either beaten or back-pedaling. His
left tackle is on the ground, staring as his missed
assignment blurs toward the quarterback's blind side.
But the ball is already in the air, frozen in flight,
headed perfectly to the only teammate who has a step in
a sea of Steelers. It is a work of art, that photo. You
can see clearly that the play is going to work. And you
can see just as clearly that Kosar is going to get
crushed.
Kosar runs his fingers along the frame. This is what
his life once was and what it is now -- a swirl of
chaos and pain and danger surrounding a man who has to
remain in control for the people around him as
everything feels like it is falling apart.
''I just wanted to play football,'' the old quarterback
says.
A laugh and a pause.
``Actually, I still do.''
(miamiherald.com)