CBA-things that make you go hmmm,

[one way]

Do not fret Dakota fans- you made a wise choice in your coach. Look at the facts, Yakima hired and won with Bayno after he was run out of UNLV. Great lakes hired and won with Bergman eventhough he received a huge ban from NCAA for violations. Based upon that, hiring Bliss should secure a title in Dakota. Not to mention Idaho won some games with Jayson Williams on the floor. Everything is pointing to the Wizards for title baby!!!!

[one way]

August 7th 2005

Bliss to Coach in CBA: Ignorance is Bliss

Most of us believe in second chances. After all, we are all human, we all make mistakes, and all of us, at one point or another, have regrets. Sports are full of examples of decent and honest coaches and players who screw up, but have genuine remorse for their actions. Most of the time, when they are fortunate enough to be given another chance, they do their very best to make the most of it. They work hard to be role models, to prove they have learned from their mistakes, and make their new team, and the community, proud.

So when I read that the Dakota Wizards of the CBA was considering giving former Baylor coach Dave Bliss another chance, I had a predictable reaction.

What??!?!?

"We're checking his references and checking this out," Wizards owner Steve McCormick told The Bismarck Tribune. "What he told us, and how he told us, we felt reasonably comfortable."

Just for perspective as to what they could be “checking out,” let’s look back at the sordid record of Coach Bliss.

On July 25th, 2003, the body of Baylor player Patrick Dennehy, after being reported missing for over a month, was found in a field in Waco, Texas. He was fatally wounded by two gunshot wounds to the head. Dennehy’s teammate, Carlton Dotson, would later plead guilty to murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Rather than spend his time joining Dennehy’s friends and family in helping law enforcement find the young man, or trying to comfort a stunned Waco community in the wake of such a senseless tragedy, Bliss was keeping himself busy with other matters.

The final report of the NCAA’s investigation found that Bliss, during the time Dennehy was still missing, provided tape recorders to two players, R.T Guinn and Ellis Kidd Jr., so they could practice delivering stories he concocted and urged them to repeat to law enforcement authorities.

As Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News reported, these kids were to claim that they saw Dennehy with wads of cash that he made from dealing drugs. Why? Bliss needed a way to explain how Dennehy came up with the $9,132 he had paid him for his tuition. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram disclosed that a former assistant coach secretly recorded Bliss trying to persuade the two kids to go along with his plan.

In addition, Bliss supplied $17,821 in tuition payments for another one of his players, Corey Herring. According to the Dallas Morning News, Bliss took a secret flight to Buffalo, NY, to coach Herring's mother in a fictional account of how she made the tuition payments. Upon his return, Bliss shipped her false financial records to back up the story. Bliss even went so far as to call the Baylor financial aid office, pretending to be Herring's father. As Horn aptly put it, “He was trying to determine what evidence investigators could glean from the records.”

The tuition payments were the reason the school had seven basketball prospects enrolled at Baylor when there were only five available scholarships.

The Morning News went on to state that “the (NCAA) infractions committee report also cited Bliss for, among other things, instructing longtime assistant Doug Ash…to file false expense accounts during their stay in Waco.” And that Bliss “encouraged boosters to donate money to a Houston AAU organization that sent players to Baylor.”

In all, the NCAA’s official statement on the matter found that the Bliss era at Baylor included “impermissible benefits and financial assistance totaling tens of thousands of dollars paid to student-athletes and prospects; impermissible recruiting inducements, contacts and tryouts involving prospects; more than $100,000 in impermissible donations funneled to amateur teams comprising prospects; and failure to follow procedures for reporting banned drug use.”

Now, if you were in the position to hire a head basketball coach for your CBA franchise, what part of that sordid tale would you be “reasonably comfortable” with? The part where Bliss attempted to frame an innocent kid, who had just been murdered by one of his own players, to cover up his illegal tuition payments?

As I said, some people deserve second chances. Dwane Casey, former assistant coach under Eddie Sutton at Kentucky and now head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, was banned from coaching in college for five years after he was linked to an envelope filled with $1000 supposedly intended for a Kentucky recruit. He was never found guilty of any charges and later successfully sued the delivery company responsible for the envelope for $6.9 million.

Larry Eustachy, the AP Coach of the Year in 2000, succumbed to the demons of alcoholism and was forced to resign at Iowa State in 2003. He is now sober, humble, and eager to turn around a moribund program at Southern Miss, who hired him the following year.

They, and others like them, deserve second chances. Bliss is another story.

Note to Mr. McCormick: Dave Bliss does not want to coach the Wizards. He does not want to settle down in Bismarck, North Dakota. He wants to coach again at the Division 1-A level. You would just be giving him a chance to get back there that he clearly doesn’t deserve.

The fact is, once a disgraced coach gets another shot at coaching, it is that much easier for the next team to give him a shot as well. If it’s OK for a CBA team to hire him, it must be OK for a European league or NBDL team to follow suit. Then, before you know it, his NCAA sanctioned 10-year banishment from college coaching is over. He’s coaching at a small Division 1-A college – seduced by the fact Bliss compiled a winning record at a school that had known only losing, and not the unethical way in which he did it.

There are supposedly four other candidates for the Wizards’ coaching vacancy. Whoever they are, it is hard to fathom any of them being passed over in favor of Dave Bliss.