Holy Shit!!! Now its hitting the fan for real!

http://msn.espn.go.com/ncb/news/2003/0815/1597177.html
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Friday, August 15

Report: Taped Bliss conversations show cover-up

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ESPN.com news services


Dave Bliss is no longer the Baylor basketball coach. But the shockwaves keep coming.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in its Saturday edition that Bliss directed a cover-up during the recent investigation into his program, and that his comments were caught on a hidden tape recorder by one of his assistant coaches.

According to the paper, Bliss wanted his players to provide false information concerning slain teammate Patrick Dennehy. The Baylor coaching staff had been accused of arranging payments for Dennehy's tuition, but Bliss asked his players to say Dennehy dealt drugs in order to pay for his tuition.

"What we've got to create here is drugs," Bliss said during one of those conversations, the Star-Telegram reported.

Bliss met with the Baylor investigating committee for more than two hours Friday night, the paper reported. Earlier in the day, assistant coach Abar Rouse, who taped the conversations, met with the committee.

After his meeting, Bliss told the newspaper that he was trying to "share some of the stories that I had heard, and I was completely wrong in what I did. But the bizarre circumstances painted me into a corner and I chose the wrong way to react. As of last Friday [Aug. 8], however, those days are over and I have co-operated completely and will continue to do so because I know I have disappointed a lot of people."

Baylor president Robert Sloan issued a statement Friday night saying he felt "betrayed by this attempt by our former basketball coach to suppress and conceal the truth. This further validates the work of our investigative attorneys, who in less than three weeks uncovered major violations, resulting in the resignation of Coach Bliss.

"I want to say to every member of the Baylor family that we will get to the bottom of this and will continue to communicate our findings in as open and transparent fashion as possible."

Rouse, a Baylor graduate who joined the Bears staff on June 1 as director of basketball operations, told the newspaper that he began recording his conversations because Bliss told him his job would be lost if he failed to cooperate. Rouse told Bliss he was reluctant to play along, but then received a copy of Bliss' contract in which the head coach had authority to hire and fire assistants.

The tapes also uncovered more attempts by Bliss to hide the truth during the allegations coming to light following Dennehy's death and the subsequent murder charge of former teammate Carlton Dotson.

Bliss, the tapes showed, knew that some players smoked marijuana and that Baylor coaches were not upfront about threats against Dennehy allegedly made by junior-college recruit Henry Thomas. Rouse made the tapes available to the Star-Telegram before meeting with the committee.

The counsel for Baylor's investigating committee, Kirk Watson, couldn't believe what he was hearing on the tapes.

"These tapes are evidence of a desperate person trying to cover up his activities. It is shocking. But the good news is it failed," Watson said. "Clearly, he was encouraging embellishment ... to try to cover himself. He used a lot of language to tell these young people that they would be all right if they embellished their stories."

Bliss resigned on Aug. 8, with Sloan declaring that the basketball program had committed "major" rules violations involving tuition and drug problems. Sloan has put the program on probation.

In the tapes, reports the Star-Telegram, Bliss said a perception could be made that Dennehy sold drugs to pay for his tuition. The tapes also revealed a conversation with Bliss and two players. Those players said they smoked marijuana with Dennehy, but neither ever saw him use or sell more potent drugs.

"First of all, nobody is ever going to know about the fact you might have smoked weed with the guys," Bliss told one player. "I think the thing we want to do -- and you think about this -- if there's a way we can create the perception that Pat may have been a dealer. Even if we had to kind of make some things look a little better than they are, that can save us."

The paper reported that during the same conversation, Bliss was hopeful the plan could work because Dennehy was not alive to refute it.

"You don't even have to tell me about Dotson because he's still alive," Bliss said. "But Dennehy is never going to refute what we say. "I've got some things to say about him, because he came in and tried to get me to help him with something, and I told him, `I can't help you.' Now I know that ticked him off, but he knows that's the truth. And now he's dead, so he isn't going to argue with me at all."

Dennehy's stepfather, Brian Brabazon, was angry when learning about the conversations on the tapes.

"You know what? Somebody is going down, because that is bull talking like that, especially trying to besmirch my son's name when he is dead," Brabazon told the newspaper.

 

:apopcorn: Stay tuned folks.

 

Good column here... hope they get Bliss for obstruction, witness tampering and anything else they can charge him with.

Bliss' Job: One That Wasn't Worth Saving
By Jim Litke, AP Sports Columnist

Nobody at Baylor told Dave Bliss that framing a dead kid would save his job.

Nobody had to. At least not in so many words.

Smearing Patrick Dennehy was Bliss' idea. So was bringing in one questionable character after another and ignoring the rules about eligibility and team chemistry at every turn. Be clear about that much.

And when it blew up, it was Bliss' idea, too, to have somebody else take the blame for the lawlessness that held sway over the day-to-day conduct of his basketball program. But anybody who thought the coach only began behaving desperately at the end wasn't paying attention at the beginning.

After all, what's one more betrayal to a man who lost count long ago? And how big a leap from suspicion to smear, especially pinning it on a kid who could no longer speak for himself.

"I think the thing we want to do, and you think about this, if there's a way we can create the perception that Pat may have been a dealer," Bliss tells one player in a July 31 conversation taped by one of his assistants. "Even if we had to kind of make some things look a little better than they are, that can save us."

Then there is a pause.

"Dennehy," Bliss resumed with chilling matter-of-factness, "is never going to refute what we say."

But he might be the only one.

On Tuesday, Bliss' cover-up threatened to unravel further. A judge in Maryland decided to keep close Dennehy pal and former Baylor backup Carlton Dotson in jail for up to 60 more days as prosecutors work to extradite him to Texas. Dotson, 21, is charged with killing Dennehy near Waco, Texas.

The same afternoon, athletic director Tom Stanton said he'd had enough. Stanton resigned earlier this month, but was supposed to remain on the job until a replacement was hired.

"These past few months," he said in a statement released by the university, "have been the most difficult period of my life."

Apparently, he was not alone. Laura Collins-Hays, Bliss' former administrative assistant, went on a radio show the same afternoon and told of standing outside Bliss' office during a meeting between the coach and one of his players. She heard banging and became certain that Bliss was bouncing a senior named Greg Davis against the wall.

When he emerged, Collins-Hays said she went to hug Davis and said, "'Greg, you don't have to take this.'"

But that was precisely the problem. Davis did have to take it; without the aid Baylor was providing — and Bliss controlled the purse string — Davis couldn't afford school. He had to take whatever the coach was dishing out.

It's easy to take in all the competing version of events and arrive at a single conclusion: that Bliss was willing to do anything to get ahead. More likely, though, the truth is that he was willing to do anything just to hold on.

Before the scandal erupted, Bliss was close to playing out the string. He was an assistant to Bob Knight (news - web sites) at Army and Indiana almost 30 years ago, then a head coach at Oklahoma, SMU and New Mexico in succession,

He arrived at Baylor in 1999 and inherited a team that had gone winless in the Big 12 the previous season. He more than doubled attendance in the seasons that followed, but never quite matched his success on the court elsewhere. In four seasons at Baylor, his teams never made it to the NCAA (news - web sites) Tournament and never won 20 games. Last year, the Bears were 14-14, an even less impressive 5-11 in the conference.

However much pressure Bliss felt to win, it wasn't all self-inflicted. At 59, already a five-time conference coach of the year, his career was trending in the wrong direction. And when even a small school like Baylor (13,000 students) ponies up six figures, it expects the same return on investment its bigger Big 12 brethren get for their money.

Whether anybody at Baylor translated those expectations into wins and losses is anybody's guess. Either way, Bliss got the message. It's the same one Jim Harrick Sr., Larry Eustachy and Jan van Breda Kolff heard from the higher-ups at Georgia, Iowa State and even tiny St. Bonaventure, respectively.

Every school wants to get in the game, which means fewer talented ballplayers to go around and more risk. People who keep saying Bliss' behavior crossed a line no coach ever transgressed need to remember: He had plenty of help.

 

You know, I'm not blind enough to think that college athletics is NOT corrupt in many ways.

But this story goes beyond even my wildest imagination. Almost. I guess I can imagine a lot of shit if I tried hard enough.

 

why does shady-ass shit ALWAYS go down in waco, tx...remind me to STAY AWAY!