TAPES REVEAL BLISS TOLD PLAYERS TO LIE ABOUT DENNEHY

WACO, Texas (AP) - Former Baylor basketball coach Dave Bliss tried to cover up
alleged NCAA violations by telling assistant coaches and players to lie and say
a slain player had been dealing drugs to pay for school, secretly recorded
audiotapes reveal.

The recordings were made by an assistant coach who turned them over to Baylor
and NCAA investigators on Friday. Copies of the tapes were obtained by the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram.

"The tapes reveal a desperate man trying to figure out how to cover himself and
to cover up" NCAA violations, said Kirk Watson, counsel for Baylor's in-house
investigations committee.

It was unclear how many players Bliss talked to about the scheme. Watson said
only one player followed Bliss's plan, but has since recanted. He would not
identify the player.

The review committee found no evidence Patrick Dennehy was involved in drug
dealing.

Watson said the tapes would be turned over to prosecutors to determine whether
a crime had been committed.

Neither Bliss nor assistant coach Abar Rouse, who made the tapes, could be
reached for comment Saturday. An AP reporter went to Bliss's home, where no one
answered the door and the blinds were drawn. Attempts to reach Baylor players
and other assistant coaches Saturday were unsuccessful.

Bliss, however, acknowledged the cover-up to the Star-Telegram and The Dallas
Morning News in Saturday's editions.

"The bizarre circumstances painted me into a corner and I chose the wrong way
to react," he said. "I have cooperated completely and will continue to do so
because I have disappointed a lot of people."

Bliss was among 10 Baylor officials to attend Dennehy's memorial service on
Aug. 7, the day before he resigned as coach.

"I keep going back to him shaking my hand and me thanking him for coming,"
Dennehy's stepfather, Brian Brabazon, said in a telephone interview Saturday
after learning of the tapes. "Had I had even an inkling of this, I would have
grabbed his hand and his throat and thrown him against the wall and beat him."

In a statement Friday night, Baylor President Robert B. Sloan Jr. said he felt
betrayed by Bliss' attempt "to suppress and conceal the truth."

Earlier this month, Sloan said an internal review committee had found that two
players had received improper tuition payments and that Bliss had admitted
involvement. The tapes reveal an attempt to divert investigators away from
those improper payments.

"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," Bliss is heard
saying on one tape. "Even if we had to kind of make some things look a little
better than they are, that can save us."

Rouse, who joined Baylor on June 1, said he made the secret recordings after
Bliss told him he would lose his job if he didn't help carry out the deception.

Bill Underwood, a member of the Baylor internal committee, told the Morning
News that the panel also found that Bliss wrote scripts for players and coaches
to review before talking with authorities. The scripts included fabrications
alluding to drug use by Dennehy.

Bliss said on the tapes that Dennehy couldn't deny the allegations because he
was dead.

"When he said Patrick couldn't refute that, he forgot something: Patrick's
other half - me," Dennehy's girlfriend, Jessica De La Rosa, said Saturday. "I'm
still here and I will speak for him. I will defend him with everything that I
have."

In one conversation, Bliss indicated another player, Harvey Thomas, would be
willing to lie about Dennehy's activities because Baylor coaches had publicly
denied knowledge of threats Thomas allegedly made to Dennehy before Dennehy's
disappearance.

"Harvey will do anything," Bliss told Rouse. "And the reason is because we did
it for Harvey."

Thomas has denied making threats or any involvement in Dennehy's death. A
former teammate, Carlton Dotson, has been charged with Dennehy's murder. Dotson
remains jailed in his home state of Maryland awaiting extradition.

Dennehy, whose body was found in a field outside Waco on July 25, died from two
gunshot wounds to the head. An autopsy found no alcohol, opiates, amphetamines
or barbiturates in his system, but his body was too decomposed to test for
marijuana.

Dotson told FBI agents in Maryland that he shot Dennehy after the player tried
to shoot him, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. But after his arrest,
Dotson told The Associated Press that he "didn't confess to anything."