BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Tapes: Ex-coach told staff, players to lie about Dennehy

Dave Bliss tried to cover up alleged NCAA violations.
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 audio tapes 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.
Bliss talked to two or three players about the scheme, although only one took the phony story to investigators and he has since recanted. Watson would not identify the player.
The review committee found no evidence Patrick Dennehy was involved in drug dealing.
Tapes to prosecutors
Watson said the tapes would be turned over to prosecutors to determine whether a crime had been committed.
Bliss 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."
Sloan feels betrayed
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."
Assistant coach Aber 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.
Allegations
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.
Thomas has denied making threats or any involvement in Dennehy's death.