It was just shy of 10 o’clock on Monday morning, Nov. 8, 1993, and media members were gathered in a press conference room at Browns Headquarters in Berea awaiting the start of the “day-after” press conference with head coach Bill Belichick.
About 18 hours before, the Browns had wrapped up a disappointing 29-14 loss to the Denver Broncos at Cleveland Stadium. The Browns didn’t play well at all offensively, being unable to move the ball consistently, or defensively, letting quarterback John Elway, their villain of the last half of the 1980s, bedevil them once again. It was the first clunker in what had otherwise been a pretty good year. After three straight losing seasons, including the last two under Belichick, the Browns, at 5-3 and still in first place in the AFC Central at the halfway point, seemed headed to the postseason — and then some. This appeared to be a pretty good team.
Media members were waiting for the presser and the usual confirmation of just about everything that had been uttered after the game. Rarely there are noteworthy changes in such a short span of time.
This would be not only one of the few exceptions to that rule, but something that sent shockwaves not just throughout Cleveland but also that of the entire NFL and general sports world.
Longtime Browns Director of Media Relations Kevin Byrne was standing off to my right, about six feet away and looking down. He then slowly walked over to me and, in a move that I have determined in looking back on it now all these years must have been at the behest of Belichick, with whom I had a good relationship and so he wanted to give me the breaking story of my life, bent down and whispered into my right ear, “We’ve cut Kosar.”
“Huh?!”
He didn’t say anything else, merely slightly nodding and looking at me in a solemn, no-nonsense way to make it clear that he wasn’t kidding. Indeed, this was no joke.
In a split-second, I got up, dropped everything I was holding, a notebook secured on a clipboard and a pen, and sprinted out of the room and down a hallway to the nearest pay phone. Cell phones and the internet had not come along yet. We all had landline phones at our work stations in the media room a lot further down the hall, but I didn’t want to take the additional time to get there. Time was of the essence. Every second counted.
I immediately realized that one of the two publications for which I worked, the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, was the only afternoon paper still left in the region. Thus, if I could get hold of the sports editor, an older man by the name of Persh Rohrer who had been with the paper for decades, and work with him to formulate a quick story, we could scoop everybody near and far. But I — we — would would have to hurry because it was about this time of the morning that the paper went to press.
We made it, by the skin of our teeth.
Whew!!!
But that was just the start, for what ensued in all of the explosion was a non-stop, 14-hour workday that lasted until midnight.
To be continued.
Steve King
