Florida St. braces for summer heat of gambling probe

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A former player calls Florida State coach Bobby Bowden to ask if his quarterback tried to throw a game. Two months later, Bowden can't remember the call.

Two of the school's assistant athletic directors, Bob Minnix and Andy Urbanic, interview people who may know about gambling troubles within the football program, but neither keep any written records.

Around the same time, athletic director Dave Hart hears of the story, but doesn't fully grasp the severity of the problem.

The current imbroglio at Florida State -- centered on allegations of gambling by former quarterback Adrian McPherson -- is making for an uncomfortable summer for the Seminoles.

The NCAA is interested. So are the police. Concerned by the appearance of a shoddy investigation by the athletic department, university president T.K. Wetherell has ordered an internal review of how the case was handled.

McPherson pays price

Thus far, McPherson has suffered the most serious consequences. He was kicked off the team in November after being accused of taking a blank check from a local business and receiving $3,500 after it was cashed.

McPherson is charged with a felony in that case. He's also charged with misdemeanor gambling following an investigation by campus, local and state police that grew from the check-writing case and from allegations that McPherson illegally used a friend's credit card.

Trial is set to begin July 14 in the check case. A pretrial hearing in the gambling case is set for May 28.

Recently, an 800-page trove of interviews and documents from the law-enforcement investigation earlier this year into the gambling allegations became public.

According to the documents, no fewer than nine witnesses say McPherson gambled on all kinds of sports, including Florida State football games.

Among the disclosures in the documents is the approximately six-month gap between the time Minnix, the school's NCAA compliance director, and Urbanic had an inkling that McPherson was involved in gambling and the time they started writing down evidence.

As recently as March, Bill Saum, who oversees gambling cases for the NCAA, said Florida State was not at risk in this situation because there was no evidence that anyone at FSU knew there might be a gambling issue.

NCAA takes a look

Now, however, the new information is out, and the NCAA is curious.

"I don't want to say it's opened a new door," Saum told The Associated Press. "This is documentation we've all known were going to eventually be produced. Now, it has been."

Minnix said he heard rumors that McPherson may have gambled on college sports around May or June 2002. Minnix brought McPherson, Jeff Inderhees and Dominic Robinson into his office for interviews.

Minnix, in an interview with the AP last week, said he didn't document a word of any of those early discussions for fear of creating a paper trail that would be open to freedom-of-information requests from media.

"It's not wise to put the scarlet letter on an individual because of a rumor," Minnix said. "That's what we were dealing with at the time."

In the released papers, investigators chided Minnix for not documenting the case. Minnix, who spent 20 years as an NCAA investigator before coming to Florida State in 1995, said that was standard procedure in his office for dealing with rumors.

"All I can do is stand on the 28 years of what I've done," Minnix told the AP. "I've been aggressive. I've been proactive. If that's not what they're looking for here at FSU -- that's for someone else to decide."

His only regret about the undocumented interviews: "If I had gotten the truth out of one of the three in the beginning, then you're not writing this story on whether I was writing something down about a rumor."

Not until details of the check case came out in November did Minnix, Hart and Urbanic, the associate athletic director for football, start asking questions about the gambling rumors again and documenting their investigation, according to the released papers.

Before that, "We didn't have anything to prove that we had reason to think we got something here," Hart told investigators.

Hart, the top authority in the athletic department, told police that Urbanic and Minnix knew more specifics than he did about the gambling case.

Hart and Bowden did not respond to interview requests for this story.

The documents state Bowden told authorities in late November that former Seminoles, now playing in the NFL, called him after Florida State's 17-7 loss to North Carolina State to tell him they heard McPherson, who went 8-for-20 for 80 yards, had thrown the game.

The supposed calls came a day after Florida State's second-worst performance on offense in Bowden's 27 years at FSU, and two days after McPherson learned he was under suspicion in the check case.

But two months later, when interviewed by police, Bowden said he couldn't remember the phone calls.

"I wish I could," the 73-year-old coach told investigators. "I'd give anything if I could just say, 'This guy called and said this.' I guess I've had so many calls between now and then."

The school's first inkling of a gambling problem came when Inderhees came to Urbanic last spring to accuse McPherson of illegally using his girlfriend's credit card. Inderhees also told Urbanic he knew McPherson owed a bookie $8,000, and he had an e-mail to prove it. Urbanic didn't want to see it, Inderhees said.

Urbanic also fielded questions from authorities about why he didn't turn the credit-card or gambling cases over to police or the NCAA.

"I probably didn't feel that there was anything that I had to specifically contract them about," Urbanic told police. He did not respond to messages seeking comment.

FSU officials claim critics are too quick to judge.

"You can take pieces of that report and put it together and make a story out of it," university president Wetherell, who played football at FSU in the mid-1960s, said in a recent interview.

In an April 10 interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Hart said he was confident the NCAA wouldn't investigate FSU's handling of the situation.

At least one university trustee expects administrators to deal swiftly with athletes whose actions embarrass their school.

"In a state like ours where open government is such a big thing, these things need to be handled quickly," said Jim Smith, a former state attorney general and FSU alum. "Sometimes it's extremely uncomfortable for people, but that is Florida."

While the administration waits to hear its fate, so does McPherson.

His attorney, Grady C. Irvin Jr., said prosecutors have unfairly singled out McPherson as a scapegoat for Florida State's problems, which he suggests involve more than just one player and extends beyond gambling. Irvin alleged that football players were paid for autographs and other memorabilia. A school spokeswoman said the athletic department and campus police will investigate.

Irvin said depositions and testimony in McPherson's case, if it goes to trial, will be eye-opening.

"I'm of the sense that FSU knows a much broader problem exists," he said. "Nobody is more hopeful that this will go away than FSU."