Somehow, someway, Dave Bliss is back in basketball.
The coach, who resigned from Baylor in 2003 after one of his players was murdered and Bliss was alleged to have concocted a story about the player dealing drugs, was hired by a school in Las Vegas just months after he resigned from an NAIA school following the release of a documentary in which Bliss repeated the drug dealing claim, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The Calvary Chapel Christian School has hired Bliss to coach its boys’ team and serve as the school’s athletic director.
Bliss is one of the most notorious coaches in the game’s history due to his response to the murder of Patrick Dennehy by his Bears teammate Carlton Dotson. Bliss was later caught on tape trying to push the perception that Dennehy was a drug dealer. Police have not found evidence to support that claim. A Baylor investigation at the time found Bliss was directly involved in paying players’ tuition and other expenses.
Bliss was given a 10-year show-cause for the scandal, but did land a job at an NAIA program, Southwestern Christian University, in 2015. He resigned in April days after the documentary, ‘Disgraced’ aired in which Bliss reiterated the drug dealing claim.
“(Dennehy) was selling drugs. He sold to all the white guys on campus,” Bliss said. “… He was the worst.”
Now, Bliss is back in a job at a Christian school in Sin City.
It strains comprehension how Bliss found another landing spot in the sport, but this entire saga has bordered on the unbelievable since it began unfolding 14 years ago. Calvary Chapel Christian School has every right to hire who they want to lead their athletic department, but it’s difficult to understand why they decided that person should be Dave Bliss.
He’s a man that tried to tarnish his player’s memory to keep his job and the perception that his program was on the up-and-up. After that player was murdered. Fourteen years later, in front of cameras, he stuck by a story that was abhorrent then and has only grown more so in time.
To hire him to not only coach a basketball team but to head an athletic department is unconscionable.
