Bliss hired to coach at Vegas high school

Career at Baylor ended in scandal, 10-year NCAA ban.

Dave Bliss is back coaching basketball.

The former Baylor men’s coach, whose tenure there ended in scandal, has been hired to coach high school ball at Calvary Chapel Christian in Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Jonathan Saxon and Damon Seiters.

He’ll also serve letic director.

Bliss’ most recent coach- ing stint was at Southwestern Christian, an NAIA col- lege in Bethany, Okla. He resigned after two years with the program following the airing of Showtime’s “Disgraced” documentary.

The subject of that documentary was the 2003 murder case in which Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy was slain by teammate Carlton Dotson. Bliss resigned from Baylor after falsely accusing Den- nehy of being a drug dealer to hide the fact he had paid for Dennehy’s tuition, an NCAA violation.

Dotson was convicted of murder and received a 35-year sentence.

Bliss’ past did not deter Calvary Chapel Christian School from hiring him, however.

“There’s a great docu- mentary he’s put out there on his testimony, and that is the one thing everybody needs to see right now,” Sep- tember Wilson, a coach and teacher at the school, told the Review-Journal. “That he’s a man of Christ.”

Bliss has coached at Okla- homa, SMU and New Mexico in addition to Baylor and Southwestern Christian. He received a 10-year ban from coaching from the NCAA following the Baylor scandal.

The Dallas Morning News’ as ath- Brad Townsend wrote on Bliss in 2003. Here’s a short excerpt from his story:

History’s view of Mr. Bliss will be colored by the Baylor scandal, which has resulted in a coaching change, a likely mass exodus of players and a self-imposed two-year probation for the basketball program.

The mystery, in hindsight, is how he could have been so admired, yet apparently dis- liked, for all these years while being generally respected by peers, fans and the media.

But Rob Robbins, who played for Mr. Bliss at the University of New Mexico from 1988 to ’91, said he’s not surprised by his former coach’s fall.

“He’s a liar, for one, a usedcar salesman,” said Mr. Robbins, who graduated as the school’s second-leading scorer. “He’ll promise you one thing and give you another. Everything he said or did was just a means to make him richer and more powerful and to feed his ego.

“I’m sorry for Dennehy’s family. It’s unfortunate and a tragedy that a kid had to die in order for the truth to come out.”