[MFFL]

Bliss turns into a bad guy
01:07 AM CDT on Sunday, August 17, 2003
Tim Cowlishaw

The truth is that, much of the time, we guess. We think we know, but we really don't.

We say that the football coach is a bad guy, but it's because he pays us no attention and because his quotes are drier than practice field dirt. We say the hockey coach is a great guy, but it's because he tells us stuff off the record that enables us to write more "enlightened" stories.

For 20 years, Dave Bliss held a place in the "good guy" category for me. There was always an asterisk next to the good guy, but it didn't seem significant.

Stories that Bliss did nothing when one of his SMU players hit another player on a bus ride home because he wouldn't turn off his overhead light. Stories of recruiting improprieties.

This was how it began. The little stuff, mostly.

The stories got bigger but stopped short of major NCAA violations when Bliss was out of local sight in New Mexico. Still, there was the smile, the love of the Yankees, the self-deprecating humor, the apparent lack of a big-time college ego.

Today, Bliss' career is over. And it's in ruins. And he has become a buzzword for egregious behavior.

Jerry Tarkanian, move over. You, sir, are small potatoes compared to Mr. Bliss.

To pull a Dave Bliss, as of two days ago, is to be caught on tape lying red-handed in such a thoughtless and insensitive manner that you will never work again. It may be a story of a different magnitude, but there is nothing Richard Nixon ever said on tape that is as damning as Bliss scheming to paint a dead player as a former drug dealer in order to save the coaching staff's hides.

You wonder what the world of big-time athletics and the pressure to win does to people. You understand how the NCAA regulations, so at odds with the reality of the modern student-athlete, forces coaches to live on the edge of the rules.

If Bliss were guilty of having paid players' tuition out of his own pocket, once he had to take them off scholarship, I would consider that a good and noble thing. It's a major NCAA violation, sure, but it's also a reasonable gesture of good will.

And that's what at least a big part of this sad, sad Patrick Dennehy tale sounded like until this weekend when the dam burst. That's when we learned Bliss encouraged players and assistants to concoct stories about Dennehy as a drug dealer because Dennehy was dead, anyway, and he wasn't going to refute their lies.

That's when we learned Bliss knew players were doing drugs and did nothing about it.

That's when we learned Bliss still believed he had no culpability in the fact that one of his players was dead and another ex-player was in jail charged with the murder and another player coming to Baylor had allegedly issued threats against the dead player that Bliss had ignored.

Bliss is down for the count now, with no future in coaching, no future in broadcasting, no hope of being remembered for much of anything he ever accomplished at Oklahoma or SMU or New Mexico. Only for how it ended at Baylor and how he was willing to smear the character of a dead 21-year-old if it might save his job, which paid Bliss in excess of $500,000 a year.

While Bliss takes more than a well-deserved fall from grace, it should be remembered by those in charge of Baylor's coaching search that ridding the school of Bliss and athletic director Tom Stanton does not end the story.

The word that the committee is working quickly to find a coach, hoping to keep players from transferring, is absurd. What's Baylor going to win this year, the Big 12?

Why are some of the same people who hired Bliss as the man to save the Baylor program in charge of this search? Don't you have to hire a clean-the-house athletic director first before worrying about whether the Bears can get to fifth in the Big 12 South ahead of Texas A&M this winter?

And Board of Regents chairman Drayton McLane Jr. says he's concerned about press leaks. That's Baylor's biggest worry right now?

Baylor men's basketball coaches have traveled a seedy path too many times. In the '80s, it was Jim Haller caught paying players with his own money – even a personal check. NCAA probation and post-season sanctions followed.

In the '90s, three assistants for coach Darrel Johnson were found guilty of wire fraud and conspiracy as they tried to gain eligibility for four junior college transfers through questionable correspondence courses. NCAA probation and sanctions followed.

Those were bad deals, and this is far worse, and this is supposed to be a school that is representative of the Baptist community.

Maybe Baylor as an entity isn't in as big a trouble today as Bliss is personally. But that could change if those in charge of rebuilding the program don't take every precaution to make certain they don't hire another Dave Bliss.

The original Dave Bliss just became an untouchable.

And a bad guy.