Curiouser and curiouser

Where's Adrian McPherson headed? Murray State? Jail?

Just when the Adrian McPherson episode at Florida State appears close to playing itself out, it wanders off in more twisted directions.

McPherson, the former FSU quarterback, has enrolled at Division I-AA Murray State, where he hopes to resume his football career without sacrificing a year of eligibility. But the 19-year-old flew home to Bradenton, Fla., last weekend, and school officials are uncertain whether he will return. It seems his parents and attorney Grady Irvin stand firmly against his transfer. In an effort to derail the move, Irvin dashed off a letter to the NCAA accusing Murray State coaches of contacting McPherson before his formal release from FSU -- a charge Murray State denies.

But that's just a family squabble. Nothing to sweat in the grand scheme of things.

More importantly, Florida prosecutors aren't quite done with McPherson. The young man has a March 6 hearing date on a felony and a misdemeanor charge related to his alleged theft of a blank check from a Tallahassee truck accessory shop last fall. McPherson has pleaded innocent to both charges. Prosecutors are reluctant to cut a plea bargain, a sign that more bad news may be lurking for the athlete.

Prosecutors and investigators say the criminal case is growing, and they anticipate McPherson will also be charged with forging the shop owner's signature on the check that Melvin Capers, McPherson's former high school teammate, has admitted cashing for $3,500. Capers also told police that he gave most of the money to McPherson. Capers has not been charged with a crime, and is cooperating with investigators. Law enforcement officials are further weighing possible charges against McPherson for allegedly passing a string of bad checks in Tallahassee last fall.

Q & A Henrietta McPherson, the mother of former Florida State quarterback Adrian McPherson, discussed her son’s dismissal from the football team, as well as the allegations he faces, with CNNSI.com senior writer Mike Fish. Fish: How difficult has this been for your family? McPherson: It has been a real nightmare. You don’t want your personal business being discussed by people that you don’t know. I didn’t know Adrian was so nationwide. It’s like people have nothing else to do. You have people making comments that don’t really know him and never talked to him. Fish: In light of the charges, do you understand why Florida State dismissed your son? McPherson: Before you can judge someone I think you need to know what the whole scenario is. Then you make a judgment call. We were just never given that opportunity. They just said something and therefore he was just, poof, gone. It was that quick. Fish: What can you do now? McPherson: We can’t do nothing but wait. If we make a week without making it in the paper it is a miracle. It is every day. It’s really sad how things are unfolding. Sometimes it makes you think about how you make your own judgment calls: Is there something I am doing wrong? Fish: Your son was a heavily recruited high school athlete two years ago; how did you see his career unfolding at the time? McPherson: We thought he’d have a starting position and be playing. That is what we projected, what we thought. And it was there . . . I don’t know what the future holds, but sometimes things happen where it puts you in a different place to make you a better person. We don’t know what our future holds. He had a taste of that. And he’ll just have to go a different route.

"It's not a question of could there be more charges -- there will be," says assistant state attorney Paul Driver, who is overseeing the McPherson case. "How many more and at what level, I don't know."

Authorities are somewhat less certain about whether McPherson fits into their wide-ranging investigation of gambling on the FSU campus.

Publicly, at least, officials are mum on where the gambling investigation is headed, but it has grown into a task force effort, headed by FSU police Sgt. Bill Wooten, Special Agent Robert Hill of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Tallahassee police Investigator James Besse. The investigation is expected to continue until at least mid-March.

Investigators seized the computer of a former FSU student during a search several weeks ago, and law enforcement officials tell CNNSI.com they are examining it for possible records and names linked to gambling.

When McPherson was booted from the team in late November for the alleged check theft, FSU athletic director Dave Hart asked him if he had any involvement with gambling or had incurred gambling debt.

"[Hart] just thought that he took the money to pay off a gambling debt," says Henrietta McPherson, the athlete's mother. "He just [thought] he had a gambling debt to pay. And [Hart] asked him, did he have a problem? [Adrian] was, 'No, I don't know what you are talking about.'"

McPherson and his attorney have repeatedly denied that McPherson placed bets or has any connection with gamblers or bookmakers. And prosecutors say that they have not connected McPherson to the gambling probe.

But authorities are still looking into how McPherson spent the cash they suspect he came upon during this past football season. Officials are operating under the belief that McPherson -- not his former friend Capers -- received most of the $3,500 after the stolen check was cashed. And, according to Driver, authorities are also investigating "more than 10" bad checks McPherson allegedly wrote this past fall.

Copies of the checks are in the process of being subpoenaed, and authorities refuse to say how much money they total. Likewise, they are being cautious about making sure some other factor -- such as a delay in McPherson's receiving college grant money -- wasn't responsible for McPherson's account being overdrawn.

Irvin, McPherson's attorney, could not be reached for comment Friday on the bad check allegations, but he has maintained from the outset that his client is innocent of any criminal wrongdoing.

In the end, Henrietta McPherson is confident her son will be cleared. Why? For starters, she says, because a bank video camera caught Capers cashing the check. But also, she says, because Capers himself later told her he'd spent the money.

A day or two after her son started in a Nov. 23 loss at North Carolina State, which would turn out to be his final FSU game, Mrs. McPherson says she phoned Capers at the community college he was attending in Tallahassee to ask him about the theft of the check. "He said he'd spent it all, he didn't have any [money] left," she recalls.

Soon after, Mrs. McPherson says, she received a call from Capers' mother. Says Mrs. McPherson, "[She said] that her son wasn't going down by himself. That we just wanted our son to save his career and all this. I just hung up."

Mrs. Capers could not be reached for comment on Mrs. McPherson's account.

The McPhersons, Henrietta and her husband, Floyd, find themselves engaged now in a tussle over the direction of those very career plans. Against their wishes, Adrian enrolled this semester at Murray State, where three friends from Bradenton -- a football player and two basketball players -- go to school. With Adrian back home this week, his parents are trying to persuade him not to return to Murray State but to enroll at a Division I-A school in the fall, which means he'd have to sit out a year of athletic eligibility.

Murray State? They love the kid. Athletic director E.W. Dennison is convinced there's nothing to the gambling rumors, says the kid just needs a "change of venue" and is convinced McPherson's legal woes will bring nothing more than some hours of community service.

"Public institutions shouldn't turn their back on kids that make mistakes, as long as they repent and pay their dues," says Dennison, explaining his school's interest.

Especially, we guess, if the kid now with warts is from an athletic hotbed like Florida, where he reigned as Mr. Basketball and Mr. Football in high school.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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