Upon Further Review: Baylor coach a disgrace
Six months ago if you had asked 100 people where Baylor University was, or who the basketball coach was, I’ll bet only 50 would have known the answer.
But these days, Baylor has become the center of morning conversations at local coffee hangouts.
The names Patrick Dennehy, Carlton Dotson and now coach Dave Bliss have made the Texas school a household name — for all the wrong reasons.
It wasn’t as if things weren’t bad enough for Baylor, with the death of one of their star basketball players — Dennehy — and the revelation that one of his teammates — Dotson — is charged with his murder.
But now you have the man who is supposed to set an example for the players and help guide them in the right direction — Bliss — admitting he not only asked players to lie to the police about Dennehy’s disappearance, but he also paid for several of the players’ tuitions.
Bliss even allegedly had the nerve to ask several of the players and coaches to tell the authorities that Dennehy did drugs and sold drugs to pay for his tuition at Baylor.
Has this man lost his mind?
Surely he didn’t think this string of lies and deception would never leak out.
One of Baylor’s assistant coaches, Abar Rouse, taped a conversion between Bliss and another player and the recording caught Bliss saying, “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.”
What kind of person would even think of doing something like that? Certainly not the kind of person who is supposed to be taking care of these kids while they’re away at college, right?
To make things a little worse, Bliss even knew some of his players smoked marijuana. This guy has been coaching for 28 years, and it makes you wonder how much corruption has taken place during his coaching career.
I know when bad things happen people have a tendency to panic. But this guy went just a little overboard.
If things aren’t bad enough for Baylor, one of their star players, Lawrence Roberts, has announced he is transferring to Mississippi State. I don’t know about you, but if I were playing basketball at Baylor I would be leaving, too.
Baylor still plans to field a men’s basketball team for the 2003-04 season, but the way things are going right now they’ll be lucky to have enough players to play tennis.
Baylor was founded in 1845, is the oldest institution in the state of Texas, and — until now, at least, had a long history as a fine institution.
Every major college has gone through some type of major embarrassment and hopefully Baylor will be known for its academic standards, and not for the horrible mistakes made by a couple of students and a coach that was nuts.
I hate to see anyone lose their job. But in this case, this man should never coach again.