If Jim Tressel ever got back into coaching you would know about it before it happened.
You quickly learned he was a rumored coaching candidate for openings at Nebraska, Wisconsin, UCLA, the Cleveland Browns and the Detroit Lions. You even heard Akron and Youngstown State both considered him for their presidencies before he ultimately took the YSU position and publicly retired from coaching.
Tressel is just like his Ohio State offenses were: In no position to surprise anybody. Almost everyone has a strong opinion about him so whether you think he’s a crook or he's what Mark Dantonio called a tragic hero, Tressel back on a sideline would be huge news, you would know about it before it was official – and it would be talked about for months.
I thought about this last week when Southwestern Christian University quietly announced the hiring of Dave Bliss right before Wisconsin and Duke played for the national title, likely knowing it would be buried by championship coverage. It came out of nowhere, largely because the idea of Bliss coaching in college again seemed impossible.
It’s been 10 years since he was in the news which means the kids he’ll be recruiting to SCU probably have no idea who Bliss is. Even people who can recall his name from a basketball scandal involving Baylor or something may not remember the particulars of what happened, and Wikipedia is deliberately sterile when it comes to painting vivid pictures of historical events.
Bliss is arguably the most vile collegiate coaching figure not associated with the Jerry Sandusky tragedy, and it's important to remember exactly what he did to earn the longest show-cause penalty ever given to a head coach.
The NCAA gave him a full decade. It expires in two months.
Baylor went 0-16 in Big XII play during the 1998-99 basketball season. Coach Harry Miller quit the day after the final game and Bliss was hired from New Mexico to take his place.
Dennehy in his redshirt season, 2002.
He found out very quickly why the Bears couldn't win any games and went to work to fortify his anemic roster with better athletes. One of the ways he did this was to have scholarship-caliber players privately agree to become walk-ons in name only; boosters would surreptitiously cover their tuition and even give them pocket money.
One of those players was Patrick Dennehy, a scholarship athlete at New Mexico who transferred to Baylor to be one of these walk-ons. Bliss promised to take care of him financially if he gave his scholarship (headcount) to another player. Dennehy lived with Carlton Dotson, another player who transferred into Waco from junior college.
Their relationship was complex, but it ended when Dotson murdered Dennehy in June of 2003. He shot him in the head twice at point-blank range.
A homicide produces a police investigation, and Bliss panicked that his scheme would unravel when detectives dug into his dead player's life - so he called a private meeting instructing his entire team to tell police Dennehy was a drug dealer.
That would explain how he paid his bills and his tuition. Having no evidence to support the story or recourse for keeping a known drug dealer on the roster seemed to matter to him. Just another black kid tragically caught up in the drug culture. Bliss told his team he wasn't changing how the tragedy unfolded or ended; just the meaningless details that preceded it. The ones that might affect his employment.
Among the many problems with Bliss' plan to denigrate a dead kid - as well as with his threats to his assistants and players to go along with the story in order to save his reputation for integrity or else - was that one of his assistants recorded Bliss as he laid out the plan in detail.
Abar Rouse's tapes captured everything. Bliss' instructions to lie to police about Dennehy being a drug dealer could be replayed for anyone who wanted to hear them. He even suggested his players "practice" the lie with the sheriff's department first - in order to have it perfected for NCAA investigators.
The recording also caught Bliss capitulating that Dennehy had told him he felt his personal safety was threatened; something he had publicly denied after he was murdered.
BLISS even suggested players "practice" the lie with the sheriff's department first - in order to have it perfected for NCAA investigators.
Right around the same time Bliss was trying to get his team to play ball it was revealed he had resigned from SMU during a 1988 investigation that uncovered evidence of infractions in the basketball program similar to the ones that resulted in the football program's death penalty the previous year.
The NCAA backed off pursuing it out of sympathy to what it had just done to SMU's athletic department. It did not want to cripple a second revenue sport at the same school.
Bliss resigned upon learning he had been recorded.
Several weeks after Dennehy's murder while the NCAA was investigating Baylor, Bliss said the following at a press conference:
"I know that there have been allegations that we haven't followed the rules. We have followed the rules, however difficult they may be, for 30 years."
That week he attended Dennehy's memorial service. A few days later he learned that Rouse had recorded him and he resigned – after 30 years of following the rules.
Baylor ultimately received significant multi-year scholarship and recruiting restrictions, a postseason ban as well as a half-season ban where it was prohibited from playing any non-conference games. It was spared the death penalty because it cooperated with the investigation.
Bliss was on tape committing witness tampering, extortion and obstruction of justice - yet somehow was not charged with any crimes. Baylor basketball was cratered and not only did its disgraced coach have to leave Waco - he fled the state of Texas entirely.
Six years after Dennehy's death Bliss returned for the first time to speak publicly about the scandal:
“I’ve heard all the things, sometimes secondhand, about how bad a person I am. I heard about stuff on ESPN. But I did an autopsy on myself. They were wrong. I was worse than that.”
SMU is a private school owned by the United Methodist Church. Baylor is a private Baptist school. Bliss was speaking at the First Baptist Church of Ovilla, about 80 miles north of the Baylor campus. That was close enough for him. He asked the congregation for forgiveness.
“I allowed the competitive world of college athletics to compromise my beliefs. I shamed my family, I shamed my school, I shamed my profession and I blasphemed my faith.”
Shortly after that speech Allen Academy, a non-denominational private college prep school in Bryan, TX decided to make Bliss a Dean, its athletic director - and its boys' basketball head coach. He was back on the court, albeit at a high school.
BLISS was caught forging the headmaster's signature on paperwork for a player he was trying to entice to transfer.
Less than six months into his tenure he was caught forging the headmaster's signature on paperwork for a player he was trying to entice to transfer. He was also found to have impermissibly covered significant portions of tuition costs for two other transfer candidates.
This should all sound familiar by now. All that was missing was a dead player to denigrate.
Bliss coaching at Allen Academy (AP)
Bliss was suspended from coaching in the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS), but Allen wasn't interested in fighting the allegations or receiving the punishment so it withdrew from TAPPS and moved down to the Texas Christian Athletic League (TCAL).
While TAPPS carried over 200 schools in its membership, TCAL's Division 2A where Allen was dropped in had only 17. Five seasons later he is returning to college basketball.
"The only consideration that I would make would be to come back at a Christian school,” said Bliss.
The Allen boys basketball team won the TCAL state championship in each of Bliss' five seasons - and he was caught cheating there, just as he cheated at SMU and most notoriously at Baylor. Bliss has cheated at literally every single Christian school that has ever employed him, and this fall he will be coaching basketball at Southwestern Christian University.
Oh, you didn't hear? It was announced right before the national championship game tipped off.
Tressel's induction into the College Football Hall of Fame was announced the week of a national title game featuring Ohio State. As with all things Tressel it received the requisite level of publicity - and as always - sweet, impotent tears of contrived outrage.
That shameless celebration in 2012.
It was just as inconceivable for many people that Tressel could be carried on his players' shoulders in Ohio Stadium during the 2012 Michigan game to a standing ovation as it was to see him being honored at midfield ahead of the coin toss for the national championship game.
They'll be even more appalled when he's formally inducted this December, three days after his 63rd birthday and with 374 days still remaining on his show-cause penalty. How is this possible? Did everyone forget what happened? They did not.
"(Tressel) was looked at closely," said Steve Hatchell, president of the National Football Foundation, which oversees the Hall of Fame. "A lot of people felt he was a heckuva coach who cared for his guys. This wasn't shoot from the hip. It was all carefully considered."
Apparently Dantonio isn't the only influential person solidly in the tragic hero camp.
Typically these things require time for the sensitivities to numb, but Tressel is the exception: he was voted in on only his second ballot. It took Barry Switzer 11 tries. It took Pat Dye 15. Once the over-the-top hysteria over Tatgate died down many people quietly figured out what the real scandal was.
So if the sight of a standing ovation for someone like Tressel still seems unsavory, the sound of fans openly cheering for Bliss to win college basketball games this fall should produce mass nausea. After all, Tressel is conspicuously out of college coaching while Bliss has quietly slithered back in.
For those fatigued from repeatedly manufacturing indignation over amateurism's frivolous non-crimes, Bliss should be a welcome sight. Nothing is easier than rooting against a genuine villain.
