America at Large: "Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas and affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Baylor is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state and the largest Baptist university in the world . . . The 432-acre campus is located on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco, Texas." - Baylor University prospectus. America at Large
As events in Waco a decade ago aptly demonstrated, fundamentalist Christians and guns can be an unhappy mix. Exactly why a couple of college-age basketball players would keep firearms, much less use them, must remain open to question, but the evidence seems fairly conclusive that one afternoon late in the second week in June, Carlton Dotson and Patrick Dennehy set out for a day of target shooting that ended badly when Dotson shot Dennehy.
Over a month passed before this fully came to light. On June 15th, Dennehy's room-mate returned from a trip to discover no sign of Dennehy. Three days later Dennehy's parents filed a missing persons report, and since Dotson seemed to have simultaneously disappeared, a nationwide manhunt ensued. On July 20th, Dotson contacted police in Chestertown, Maryland, saying he "needed help". Next day he was charged with the murder of Dennehy, whose body, two bullet holes in its skull, was found in an isolated area of west Texas.
While the eyes of a nation remained transfixed as the tableau played itself out, an even more sordid sequence of events was developing in the boardrooms of the university's athletic department, where as it turns out Dave Bliss was presiding over a cesspool of his own making.
Bliss is a 59 year-old career coach. An Ivy League-educated, Bible-quoting sort, Bliss had apparently determined to circumvent NCAA regulations on several counts. Recognising Dennehy's death would lead to a criminal investigation, he set about attempting to create a web of deceit and betrayal to save his own hide.
Under-the-table payments to players are sufficiently commonplace in big-time college athletics that the NCAA employs its own investigatory team. Given the scope of the criminal investigation, Bliss recognised if the Waco cops didn't figure out somebody had been paying off Dennehy, the FBI certainly would, and tried to cover up his own indiscretions by portraying Dennehy as a drug kingpin.
Although Baylor officials concede there is no evidence Dennehy dealt drugs, Bliss concocted a plot in which team-mates were urged to claim Dennehy had paid his $7,000 tuition bill with the profits from his drug empire. This fantasy seemed better to Bliss than the truth, which was apparently Dennehy, and presumably several other Bears players, had routinely been the recipients of illicit payments.
Given the scope of this proposed conspiracy, it's hard to imagine how Bliss thought he was going to keep it quiet, but he apparently attempted to recruit his entire coterie of assistants, as well as several of his players, to the plot. It was such an arrogant and mean-spirited scheme that at least one assistant coach and the father of one player tape-recorded conversations with the out-of-control coach.
"Reasonable doubt is there's nobody right now that can say we paid Pat Dennehy, because he's dead," Bliss told assistant coach Abar Rouse in a conversation Rouse was secretly taping and later provided to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "The reason we're in this jam is because of a dead guy and a guy that murdered him, and that isn't fair for you and me and Abar to be in this jam," Bliss explained to an unnamed player's tape-recorder.
At a meeting with players a few days after Dennehy's body had been found, Bliss told a player at another secretly-taped meeting, "First of all, nobody is ever going to know about the fact you might have smoked weed with the guys. 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." In another admission, Bliss says: "Now he's (Dennehy) dead, so he isn't going to argue with me at all."
When Bliss rang up Bears player RT Guinn a few days later, the student's father also had the prescience to tape the telephone conversation, in which the coach attempts to prepare Guinn for the inevitable visit from the authorities.
"The only thing I would do at the end is just say, 'Pat would get people knocking on the door all the time. He would get phone calls. And he'd take those people in the back room. And one time he came out of the back room and he had a wad of money,' " the coach is heard telling the player. "It doesn't have to be the same story. It just has to have the same ending. The only thing you guys might do is, if the sheriff's investigator says anything more, you guys can tell a little bit of what you're telling me here. You smoked a little dope with Dennehy, but you didn't kill him. You didn't do anything else. And it gives you a chance to practice your story."
Bliss ("We're the victims; if you read the papers, shit, it's like I'm the bad guy") submitted his resignation, and two days ago he was followed by the Bears' athletic director, Tom Stanton. NCAA probation would seem likely, and Baylor athletic programs could remain in disarray for a generation. Exactly why Bliss felt constrained to go to such lengths to cheat remains mystifying: Baylor's basketball team had reached the 64-team NCAA tournament just once in the last half-century. There was no pressure to do anything other than field a reasonably competitive team.
Dotson doesn't yet have a trial date, and the authorities are trying to figure out what charges can be filed against Bliss. We are left to ponder the delusional defence of the disgraced coach: "The reason we're in this jam is because of a dead guy."
