4/29/2023 0 Comments Dave blissYoungblood, a project manager and volunteer basketball coach, ended up coaching alongside Bliss from 2017 to 2020. “I knew of Dave Bliss and I know the stories,’’ Youngblood said, “so I grilled him.’’ Youngblood’s children attended the school. “It’s the most terrible thing to me that somebody would even consider putting somebody like him in a position of leadership of young men.’’Īdrian Youngblood said he had reservations in 2017 when Bliss asked him to join the coaching staff at Calvary Chapel Christian School in Las Vegas after Bliss got the head coaching job. “I don’t know why people keep getting sucked in and they don’t believe who this person is,’’ said Abar Rouse, a former assistant coach who worked under Bliss at Baylor and helped implicate Bliss by secretly recording their conversations. School administrators did not respond to several messages seeking comment. In 2019, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that American Prep Academy, where Bliss was then athletic director and head basketball coach, forfeited two middle school games for using ineligible players that season. “And maybe some frustration from the TAPPS board and leadership as to how Dave came to campus and how we came to be within their league and organization.’’ “A lot of that had to do with some mismanagement of paperwork,’’ said Baker, the admissions director at Allen Academy, of the alleged rules violations. The school denied the allegations and then changed leagues, leaving TAPPS for the Texas Christian Athletic League, and Bliss began stacking up the state championship trophies. There has been plenty on-court success for Bliss, who since his forced resignation at Baylor in 2003 has won six high school state championships and fell one victory shy of the National Christian College Athletic Association Division I championship in 2016.ĭave Bliss collects his notes after announcing his resignation as Baylor coach on Aug. He was surrounded by people that valued him and by people that knew his story, knew his background." "I remember his farewell pep rally, teachers were crying, kids were crying. "But Allen Academy was truly a place where he was loved by all.ĭAN WOLKEN: Give Final Four coach Scott Drew every bit of credit for Baylor's remarkable turnaroundįINAL FOUR PREVIEW: Breaking down Baylor-Houston, Gonzaga-UCLA matchups “Obviously people have their perspective and opinions of Dave," said Pat Baker, Director of Admissions at Allen Academy, a private school in Bryan, Texas where Bliss coached from 2010 to 2015. He did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Since the scandal, Bliss has worked as a head coach in the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association for a season at Southwestern Christian University, an NAIA school in Bethany, Oklahoma for two seasons and at three high schools for a combined eight seasons.īliss, 77, was coaching high school basketball in Las Vegas until the coronavirus pandemic hit a year ago. When his lies were uncovered, Bliss was effectively banished in 2005 from NCAA competition for 10 years. Those violations included Bliss making tuition payments for players and unreported failed drug tests. That year, after one of his players murdered another, Bliss tried to frame the dead player as a drug dealer to cover up NCAA rules violations. He remains at the center of one of the biggest scandals in college sports history, and memories tied to his misdeeds have resurfaced.īaylor is set to play in the Final Four Saturday for the first time since 1950, the high point for a program that reached the lowest of lows in 2003. Dave Bliss, the former Baylor men’s basketball coach, lives in a 1,282-square foot house near San Antonio and forever in infamy.
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