AFTER CONVICTION, FOOTBALL PLAYER GETS A SECOND CHANCE AT CENTRAL MO.

WARRENSBURG, Mo. - John McPherson took a deep breath. Relaxing on campus at
Central Missouri State before football practice, he stared at the sky in
appreciation. He does that sometimes. Notices things he wouldn't have
noticed before. Stops to look around.

"Not a cloud in the sky," he said, reclined on a bench. "It's a great day
to be a Mule."

His story ends here, with this new beginning. He's a cornerback for the
Division II Mules. After his "situation," as he calls it, he wondered
whether he'd spend the next 10 years in prison. A return to college
football seemed like a fairy tale. Now he's found his second chance.

He's back. Married, with two kids he adores. He rediscovered his smile. He
dreams of being a teacher and a coach. Fifth on the team in tackles, he's
showing some of the athletic ability that made him a sought-after recruit
at Kansas City's Schlagle High.

His new teammates know what happened to him, even though McPherson doesn't
often get into specifics. His silence is almost an obsession. He avoids the
triggers that bring the daisy chain of bad memories. Just thinking about it
can ruin his day, something he doesn't have time for.

There are classes, meetings and practice. There are five years of
probation, so he's got to stay clean.

McPherson, 22, has been forgotten at the University of Missouri, where he
started his college career. His No. 16 is now worn by golden-boy
quarterback Brad Smith, who's trying to exorcise the demons of the
program's losing ways.

As his old number is sold around Columbia as proof of the rebirth,
McPherson takes his own renewal a day at a time. All manner of things --
from the pedestrian weight room at Central Missouri to Election Day --
remind him of what he threw away.

"I can't vote," he said. "I'm a felon. I don't know if I can teach in
Kansas. I can't teach in Missouri as a felon. I can't go hunting with my
grandpa. It's a firearm, five years.

"People don't realize it, but you basically lose your life. I'll never work
at the bank. Felons aren't allowed in the banking industry. You have to
look at the bright side of things so you don't get swallowed, drowned in
the bad side."

The bright side is he has been given another chance, thanks to Mules coach
Willie Fritz. Other schools had tried to get McPherson, places like Sam
Houston State and Southwest Missouri State, but administrations always
pulled the plug.

"People don't want that publicity at their school," McPherson said, "and I
understand that."

Fritz listened when McPherson called, and he rescued the talented athlete
from his dead-end job cleaning cars.

"I feel like everybody deserves a second chance, but I didn't want this to
happen on my watch," Fritz said.

He decided to say yes when McPherson's probation officer said there was
little risk involved.

Robert Stokoe, the probation officer, said McPherson made a dumb mistake
and paid the price. The felony conviction seems to be an aberration, given
McPherson's clean past. He has never failed a drug test and maintains what
Fritz says is a respectable grade-point average.

"He's done well," Stokoe said. "I don't anticipate any problems.

"But, then again, I wouldn't bet any good money on people I supervise."

When McPherson arrived in Warrensburg, he stood up in the first team
meeting and gave the nuts and bolts of his situation.

Many still had questions, though. His new friends asked exactly what had
gone down.

"They didn't know what it was," he said. "I just said, 'I didn't rape
anyone. I didn't kill anyone. It was one of those situations that involved
marijuana, and I don't want to talk about it.' I hate to talk about it."

Painful triggers still force him to remember. As the team bus barreled
north toward St. Joseph for a game earlier this year, it passed the
penitentiary that McPherson once called home.

Some of the Mules pointed, looking at the concertina wire and the
futureless walls. The rolls of razor-sharp metal seemed to never end,
twisting back on themselves in nauseating geometry.

His teammates didn't know it was the same place where he had done the
majority of his four months in jail. He'd never told them. He spun back in
time, the last two years of his life playing in reverse.

"You try to pinpoint every little stupid thing you could have changed," he
said. "This isn't 'Back to the Future.' You don't have a time machine,
because if you did, I'd probably still be at Missouri with No. 16 on."

The bus rolled by, and McPherson kept quiet. He couldn't look at the
prison. He turned away and closed his eyes.

To the other players, even the outside of the place was scary. They
couldn't imagine the inside. He could. Though his eyes were shut, he could
still see.

Each day in prison was like the last, only worse. Yesterday topped today,
if only because it was over.

McPherson never knew whether he would be attacked, slugged in the head with
a weapon made of a sock and a chili can. He said he saw crazy stuff while
living in both jails, inmates going psycho and beating other inmates senseless.

His name had been in the paper and on television -- he was both an athlete
and someone who'd blown a chance many never had. That made him a potential
target.

"You never knew when you'd walk by and someone would just hit you," he
said. "You wanna look like a nobody. People get jealous. They'll kill you.
They're not getting out -- what do they care? I was in there with
murderers. People that have done 25 years. It was so stressful."

The stress began before the heavy metal doors clanged shut. In December
2000, five months after getting arrested, he pleaded guilty to drug
trafficking in the second degree. He awaited sentencing. His high school
coach, Steve Szczygiel, remembers McPherson coming to the weight room right
before heading off to receive his punishment.

It was one of the most emotional moments for McPherson, who opened up to
his old coach about the fear. The uncertainty. He asked whether he'd ever
get to play football again. If he'd get stuck in jail for a long time.

He was scared of going to prison. And maybe more scared about what he'd do
when he got out.

Then, on the last day of January, he stood in front of a judge in a
courtroom. John McPherson had to pay. But how much?

His otherwise clean past factored into the decision, as did a letter to the
judge from former Missouri assistant coach DeMontie Cross.

"If you give him a second chance," Cross, now an assistant at Iowa State,
remembers telling the judge, "he'd be under my guidance."

The judge gave McPherson nine years but said he'd have to do only 120 days
if he acted right. He was taken into custody. No time to get ready. Just
stern words and shackles.

"He talks to you like Judge Judy talks to you," McPherson said. "It was one
of those confusing feelings because I was so (hacked) off. I wasn't mad at
the judge. I was (mad) at myself."

He went first to county, then to the low-security pen. He was stripped
down, examined in front of large groups of people. He felt embarrassed. He
quickly discovered the real penal code: Weakness was sniffed out and preyed
upon by fellow inmates.

"It's a mind game," McPherson said. "If you were weak in that type of
situation, you would be buying people food."

For the first few weeks, he didn't speak to anyone. He went through a
circle of emotions: anger, fear, regret, more anger.

Some days he'd call his mother, wondering whether he'd make it. He felt as
if he'd lost his family. He knew if he kept out of trouble, he would be
free in no time. But trouble had a way of materializing in jail, so he
lived under the shadow of doing all nine years.

He wrote and received letters from former teammates like Eric Spencer and
former coaches like Cross.

Cross, who was coaching then at Sam Houston State, sent media guides with
little notes about the players. Spencer warned him about falling into the
drug game when he got out.

McPherson learned to accept the 6-ounce cup of juice and the barely edible
food. He watched NBA games, drawing inspiration from the gritty play of
Philadelphia's Allen Iverson. He washed and stacked dishes.

He did push-ups. He'd take a deck of cards and draw a number. A seven? He'd
do seven push-ups. A three? He'd do three. Through the whole deck and then
again, he worked on getting stronger. He looked to one day leaving this
purgatory and returning to football.

He never believed he was like his fellow inmates, even if a judge had ruled
he was. He'd eat next to an armed robber and wonder how he could be locked
in the same place. So he kept to himself.

"You don't want to make friends with criminals," he said. "Why would you
want to make friends with criminals?"

He watched his back and looked to his future. He counted off the days until
he could go back home to see his wife and children, until he could put on
real clothes. His thoughts, as Solzhenitsyn wrote, often returned to the
same things: He replayed the events that had brought him to prison in the
first place.

He'd made the drive countless times. With his girlfriend and first child in
Kansas City and the Missouri football team in Columbia, McPherson spent
much of summer 2000 commuting back and forth for workouts.

He'd been Missouri's special-teams player of the year in 1999 and had
scored a touchdown. His play earned him a spot in the starting lineup, so
he saw the 2000 season as his chance to shine.

At the same time, he was having financial problems. He had a child -- and
another on the way -- and was struggling to pay the bills. To move his
family to Columbia, he needed to make deposits and down payments.

"He really got into a bind," Spencer said. "It was hard to go to school and
make money at the same time."

"It was one of those situations," McPherson said. "College? Come on. We're
broke. We're credit-card spending."

In late July, McPherson's car needed repairs. His mother rented him a white
1999 Chevy Malibu so he could still attend workouts. More than two years
later, even the sight of a Malibu sends McPherson into fits, conjuring up
images of July 27, 2000.

That night, he made his usual trip. He had an unusual cargo.

East of Odessa, on Interstate 70, a Missouri Highway patrolman named Brian
Hagerty stopped the Malibu, saying later that McPherson was driving
erratically.

The cop asked where he was going. McPherson told him football practice. The
cop told him he'd been stopped for a routine inspection. Do you mind if I
check the car for drugs?

It could have ended there, and that drives McPherson batty sometimes. Now
he knows his rights. Now he knows he could have said no.

He said yes.

The officer, assisted by a drug dog, found nearly 100 pounds of marijuana
in the trunk and more than $4,000 in cash in the center console.

"A lot of city kids know somebody who has lots of money, and I think it was
an opportunity to get some quick, easy cash," Szczygiel said.

McPherson was taken to jail, where he spent the night. He said he felt
"claustrophobic." He called his mother, the toughest call he'd ever had to
make. There was a line for the phone, so he made it brief -- about two
minutes. He asked her to come get him, saying he'd explain everything when
she got there.

"I was sick," he said.

Out of jail, he went to Columbia to confess to head coach Larry Smith. That
was also hard. Smith, McPherson remembers, told him, "I know you. I know
you made a mistake. It was a very bad mistake."

McPherson was suspended from the team, and less than two weeks later, the
story broke. A media storm followed. McPherson saw himself on CNN and ESPN.
He got a letter in the mail that said, "Scholarship revoked."

In the months that followed, more bad press came Missouri's way. Another
player, Brandon Ford, was arrested with a large amount of marijuana. MU
football became a punch line to a joke. The arrests were not symptomatic of
a bigger problem at MU, athletic director Mike Alden said, and the school
dealt sternly with McPherson.

"It was pretty clear-cut," Alden said.

McPherson faded away. With each step deeper into the abyss, he'd remember
that day.

And so, like always, it comes zigzagging back to this.

McPherson tries not to think of the moment, about how one word sent him
tumbling.

"I stopped asking myself," he says. "It was driving me crazy, the instant
replay of the decision."

All of it -- the strip searches, the depression, the chili cans, the
abandonment -- can be traced to one point, from which he believes all his
problems radiate. If only John McPherson, the one sitting on the park bench
at his new school, the one watching it happen silently in his mind, could
go back and stop himself. Stop himself from knowingly transporting 100
pounds of marijuana from Kansas City to Columbia.

He's fuzzy with disclosing the details -- those close to him said he fears
retribution if he talks too much -- but this he does reveal: An
acquaintance, someone he hasn't seen since, knows he's going to Columbia
for a workout. Do me a favor, and you can pick up some quick cash. Just
drive like you always do. How 'bout it?

John McPherson says yes, and his story begins.