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CHICAGO - By the time Marcus Harrison got up from the spot on the street curb where a Fayetteville policeman had ordered him to sit that night last August, he knew what direction he was headed.
First Harrison was going to the Washington County (Ark.) Detention Center in handcuffs. And when the sun rose on his second chance the following morning, he vowed to straighten out a life that had suddenly, stunningly gone crooked.
"I realized I had made a stupid mistake and decided then to do whatever was necessary to make it right again," Harrison said. "Maybe God had to shoot me down for me to eventually do what I had to do."
The Bears thought enough of Harrison's football ability to select the former Arkansas star in the third round of last weekend's NFL draft. The August arrest was the main reason the 6-foot-3-inch, 310-pound defensive tackle was still around in the third round.
Before Harrison was pulled over just after 11 p.m. on a quiet residential street for driving 38 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone, his football career had been cruising along just fine. He had stood up in front of his Arkansas teammates after being named team captain.
Every Razorback in the room that night admired Harrison, an exemplary leader whose church upbringing and military prep school background made him a yes-sir, no-sir type of guy. A guy everyone at that team meeting trusted.
Before sending his players off for their last free weekend, then-Arkansas coach Houston Nutt specifically told his team: "We've had the perfect camp scenario all summer, and let's end it that way."
It didn't, of course. For reasons that still escape Harrison, 23, he made a decision that ultimately cost him millions of dollars.
According to a Fayetteville police report, Harrison stopped at a gas station and bought drugs from a man he had never met, he later admitted. When police pulled over Harrison a few minutes later for speeding, they smelled marijuana smoke as he rolled down the window of his gray Chevy Caprice.
An officer asked Harrison to step out of the vehicle, and a search of the car revealed two cigars under the seat containing a total of two grams of marijuana. When an officer asked Harrison if he had anything else illegal on him, he volunteered that he had a blue pill wrapped in a plastic bag in the right cargo pocket of his pants.
The pill was Ecstasy, a synthetic drug popular on the college party scene.
"Once I saw the lights on behind me, it wasn't like I was going to lie to police or anyone," Harrison recalled. "I knew I had made a mistake, so I told them up front where (the drugs) were."
Harrison took the same direct approach with Nutt, the first person he called from jail, and parents Calvin and Michelle, the mom and dad who raised him to know better. The one-game suspension Nutt handed down was nothing compared to the look of devastation Michelle Harrison wore when she saw her son after the arrest.
pochman 
