Bernie Kosar: 'I'm 45 and ... an Idiot'

By Michael David Smith

Posted Jul 14, 2009 2:35PM

Bernie Kosar was drafted by the Cleveland Browns at age 21 and handed a multimillion-dollar contract, and as one of the highest-paid quarterbacks in the NFL in the 1980s and 1990s, he earned a fortune that should have lasted him several lifetimes. He also had a wife and four daughters, and a reputation as a family man.

But now he's bankrupt and in the midst of a nasty divorce.

So what happened? Kosar says it's really quite simple: He thought he was smart when he was in his 20s, and it's only now, in his 40s, that he realizes he's an idiot. Kosar tells Dan Le Batard of The Miami Herald: "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."

As crazy as it sounds now, Kosar was once viewed as a huge success story in the business world, and as the model for how an athlete should invest his salary. He owned restaurants and bought and sold real estate, and that's why, in his 20s, everyone told him how smart he was.

But much of Kosar's money was tied up in the Florida real estate market that has now gone bust, and Kosar recently filed for bankruptcy and put his 9,900-square foot Florida mansion up for sale.

Kosar says that he could always hire people to do things for him, or have his wife and four daughters do household chores, so he never learned the most basic of tasks, like doing his own laundry or running his dishwasher. Now his wife has left him in a divorce that cost him, he said, between $4 million and $5 million in legal fees.

Although it obviously took Kosar a couple of decades too long to come to the realization that he had a lot to learn, I think it's refreshing that Kosar can admit his shortcomings and try to move on. Kosar may never again live the luxurious life he had in the 1990s, but he promises that he's not finished, saying his approach to life will be like his approach to football: "I'm going to come out of this fine. I always get up."