![]() Sloan, Jr, then president of the university. He published a book, Fall to Grace, and went on a motivational speaking tour, sharing lessons he’d learned. And in 2015, after his punishment ended, Bliss became Coach Bliss again after landing the head coaching job at Southwestern Christian University.Īt Baylor, concerns quickly shifted from that summer’s basketball scandal to issues with Robert B. Following his resignation and NCAA suspension, he found work coaching at several prep schools. Still, Bliss seemed to quickly move past that darkness. “I mean, I said bad things about their kid.” In another part, when Bliss seems close to taking some responsibility, he casts it as still not quite his fault: “I had allowed the world of competitive athletics to take me to a place that was so dark.” In one moment, he acknowledges why Dennehy’s parents might be upset with him. Instead, Bliss seems to double down on his denials and continues to deflect responsibility onto other coaches, players, and the Baylor administration. Kondelis convinced Bliss to sit for several interviews for the documentary, and after the case is laid out on screen, you hope to see Bliss explain his actions and feel something close to remorse. In the larger NCAA investigation that followed, Bliss admitted that he had lied to investigators, and in 2005, he was given what amounted to a ten-year suspension from working in the NCAA. At one point, Bliss assures other players that Dennehy won’t be able to deny their statements because “he’s dead.”Īfter investigators requested his bank statements, making clear that he’d been caught violating NCAA regulations by paying Dennehy, Bliss resigned from Baylor. (Thomas has never been charged with anything related to the killing.) The audio from the tapes, revealed toward the end of the documentary, is chilling. In another meeting, Bliss tells Rouse that Thomas would back up their stories about Dennehy dealing drugs. Days after Dennehy’s body is found, Bliss is recorded attempting to convince other players that Dennehy made money from dealing drugs. He highlights questions that exist in the case today, including whether Dotson-who, after pleading guilty, was sentenced to 35 years in prison-was mentally sound during his trial, or if Dotson’s lawyers, who had ties to Baylor, had properly represented him.īut after Abar Rouse, an assistant coach for Baylor at the time, began secretly recording meetings with players and coaches, the extent of Bliss’s involvement is made clear to investigators. Through an extensive array of interviews with former coaches and players, police officers, attorneys, and journalists, Kondelis unravels the bizarre and tragic story in Disgraced. Police later found Dennehy shot to death in a gravel pit north of Waco. About a month after Dennehy went missing, however, it was Dotson who confessed to killing him. In police statements and in an interview for the documentary, Thomas denies making any threats, but friends of Dotson and Dennehy recalled that the two were so fearful that they had purchased guns. The documentary begins in June 2003 with the disappearance of Patrick Dennehy, a junior on the Baylor basketball team, not long after Dennehy reported to his coaches that he and teammate Carlton Dotson were receiving threats from another player, Harvey Thomas. ![]() “So the big thing was, who can we actually get on camera to talk about this?” “There’s a reason why nobody’s done anything on this and it’s because nobody talked,” Kondelis told a SXSW audience after the premiere of Disgraced. ![]() He simply wanted to reexamine one of the darkest moments in the history of Texas athletics. That success, at a moment when the university remains entangled in a sexual assault scandal, has kept Baylor in a national spotlight.īut Austin director Pat Kondelis hadn’t counted on any of this when he started working on the documentary two years ago. The national debut, on Showtime, will coincide with the weekend of the Final Four, one of the biggest events in all of sports and one that could include the Bears. The film premiered at SXSW on March 12, a few days before this year’s highly touted Bears squad started its tournament run. The release of Disgraced, a new documentary that details a Baylor basketball scandal that shook the university nearly fifteen years ago, comes at an interesting time. ![]()
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