Posted on 08/19/2003 7:30:11 AM PDT by Recourse
Ex-aide: Bliss an 'angry man'
She says complaints on his behavior, dealings at Baylor were ignored
07:13 AM CDT on Tuesday, August 19, 2003
By BARRY HORN / The Dallas Morning News
Dave Bliss' former administrative assistant said Monday that her boss was an "angry man" who sometimes asked her to do things that she believed compromised her integrity.
Laura Collins-Hays, who worked for the Baylor University basketball coach for three years before resigning in March 2002, characterized the office atmosphere as frightening and said she witnessed behavior and procedures she considered questionable. Among them:
• Checks for the Sixth Man Club, a booster group, were funneled through the basketball office instead of directly to the Baylor Bear Foundation, the general booster club for Baylor athletics.
• A car-leasing agency called the basketball office about players' cars.
• A live feed of a visiting team's practice at the Ferrell Center was shown on a TV monitor in the athletic department.
• Abusive language was used with players.
Mr. Bliss did not return phone calls Monday seeking comment.
Ms. Collins-Hays told The Dallas Morning News that she took her complaints about Mr. Bliss' treatment of her and the players to the Baylor administration three times and was rebuffed each time.
"I was afraid of him," she said. Ms. Collins-Hays, 62, said Mr. Bliss once "scared the pooky out of me" when she saw him throw a telephone across his office.
Mr. Bliss resigned Aug. 8 after an internal investigative panel found evidence of NCAA violations, including allegations that he was involved in illicit payments to players.
Mr. Bliss acknowledged Friday that he tried to orchestrate a cover-up.
Ms. Collins-Hays, a Baylor graduate who helps her husband run two Waco-area bookstores, said she loved working for her alma mater except for the time spent with Mr. Bliss.
One of her duties, she said, was handling checks from members of the Sixth Man Club, which Baylor officials have characterized as an elite level of the better-known Fast Break Club.
A Bliss innovation
She said the club was a Bliss innovation.
"Dave came to me and said Bill Stevens wanted to start an organization like they had at SMU," she said. "He told me Bill was getting names of people together." Mr. Bliss coached at SMU from 1980 to 1988.
William F. Stevens, a booster disassociated from SMU in 1987, has told The News that he is a member of the Bear Foundation but he said he is not a member of the Fast Break Club. His name appears on the Sixth Man Club roster for the 2001-02 season.
Not long after her first conversation with Mr. Bliss about the Sixth Man Club, Ms. Collins-Hays said, members were bringing her personal checks for $1,500 made out to the club. She said others sent checks directly to Mr. Bliss, who turned the checks over to her – a procedure that she found odd.
She said she would record the checks in a ledger and send them to Doug Smith, executive director of the Bear Foundation. She said former assistant coach Brian O'Neill, who left Baylor after the 2002-03 season, kept track of the club's finances.
Mr. O'Neill, now an assistant women's basketball coach at the University of New Mexico, said that while he was the staff's liaison to the Sixth Man Club, its finances were handled by associate athletic director David Taylor.
Baylor officials have said that Sixth Man members wrote their checks to the Fast Break Club.
Pat Nunley, a Waco lawyer and former Baylor basketball player who works on Bears broadcasts, said he always made out a separate check for his Sixth Man Club membership and delivered it to the basketball office.
"It was my first choice to always tender it to Dave Bliss or someone on his staff to let them know I had done so," Mr. Nunley said.
Mr. Nunley said he assumed his donations went to things such as buying better video equipment and outfitting the players "with green blazers, ties and khakis" on road trips.
Ms. Collins-Hays said she also was concerned that Baylor officials might have been helping players obtain cars in violation of NCAA regulations because calls concerning players' leases came to the basketball office.
She described an employee of a Waco leasing company calling the basketball office and requesting the keys to a player's car.
"He called one day and said he needed the keys to [player] Wendell Greenleaf's car. I turned to Brian O'Neill and he said he'd call Wendell." Mr. Greenleaf did not return a call seeking comment.
She said at least one other player also had a car from the same company, Sinclair Leasing.
Leased cars to coaches
David Chiles, founder of Sinclair Leasing, said the company leased cars to coaches and some players. He said he hadn't been contacted by the committee that's investigating possible NCAA violations.
"I don't think we ever actually leased a car to Greenleaf. Our involvement with Baylor basketball had been to provide cars for the coaches, and we did not do that last year. We opted not to do it last year, but we did it year before last. And those were cars that we provided to Coach Bliss and the various assistant coaches for, in return, having advertising. We have leased cars in the past to some of their players. With privacy laws, I don't know if I should even disclose. ... Obviously, I'll have to if I get investigated by the committee."
Mr. Chiles also said that he was a member of the Sixth Man Club: "... just based on me providing the cars, he [Bliss] told me he would include me as a member. But I never went to any of the meetings."
Ms. Collins-Hays said she was working at her desk in January 2002 when Debbie Penney, administrative assistant to women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey-Robertson, told her she had been flipping the channels on her television set and stopped when she saw the Kansas State men practicing in the Ferrell Center, the basketball arena.
"It concerned her," Ms. Collins-Hays said.
Ms. Collins-Hays said Ms. Penney asked her to make sure she wasn't mistaken. Ms. Collins-Hays said she looked out on the Ferrell Center court and confirmed that Ms. Penney was watching the Kansas State team, which was in Waco to play Baylor.
Ms. Collins-Hays said Ms. Penney called Ms. Mulkey-Robertson, who was on the road with the Lady Bears.
Ms. Penney later reported to Ms. Collins-Hays, she said, that Ms. Mulkey-Robertson reported the incident "to the powers that be and they'll take care of it."
That was the last Ms. Collins-Hays heard about the incident, she said.
Contacted Monday, Ms. Penney said, "I'm sorry, I don't want to discuss this. It's not a good thing for me to do."
Ms. Mulkey-Robertson said: "It is not proper for me to comment on items that currently are under investigation, but I can forthrightly affirm the women's basketball program is completely autonomous ...
"In no way do I want my program associated with anything that is going on in men's basketball."
Tom Gilbert, a spokesman for Kansas State coach Jim Wooldridge, said the coach would not comment. "Right now, we don't know the whole story."
Asked about the possibility of a visiting team's practice being shown live in the home team's athletic department offices, another Big 12 coach, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "I can't believe anyone would do that."
Big 12 Conference assistant commissioner Lori Ebihara said she didn't think monitoring an opponent's practice was covered in the NCAA manual.
"I have never been asked that question," she said. "Don't they usually close sessions, kind of a mutual agreement?"
Ms. Collins-Hays said that Mr. Bliss' treatment of his players frightened her. She described an incident in the fall of 2001 when the coach summoned senior Greg Davis to his office. When Mr. Davis arrived, he found Mr. Bliss and his three assistant coaches waiting, Ms. Collins-Hays said.
Almost as soon as Mr. Bliss closed his office door, Ms. Collins-Hays said, she heard her boss shouting and cursing at the player.
Then the door opened and the assistant coaches filed out, she said, and she heard what she believed could have been the sound of physical contact coming from the office with Mr. Bliss and the player.
Ms. Collins-Hays she was "terrified."
"I went and threw up," she said.
Unheeded advice
When she saw Mr. Davis again that afternoon, she told Mr. Davis, "You don't have to take this from Coach Bliss."
"He said, 'Yes I do, if I want to keep my scholarship.' "
Mr. Davis could not be reached for comment.
That same day, Ms. Collins-Hays, who had worked in the athletic department in various capacities since 1995, said she went to see Jaffus Hardrick, the university's assistant vice president/director of personnel services.
"I told him what had gone on," she said. "He told me, 'I've met Coach Bliss. He doesn't act like that. Go back to work.' "
She said she went to Mr. Hardrick two more times. The last time, she said, he told her that he would not forward her concerns or her request to meet directly with athletic director Tom Stanton.
Told to 'forget it'
She said Mr. Hardrick told her "to forget it. Don't bother Tom. He told me I was to take care of everything."
Mr. Hardrick did not return a call seeking comment.
Baylor spokesman Larry Brumley confirmed that Mr. Hardrick had spoken with Ms. Collins-Hays.
"She was counseled on what her options were. She was told she could transfer out of the department," he said. "The next thing we know, she resigned."
Ms. Collins-Hays said she decided to resign and did so the next day. She said that she told Mr. O'Neill she was afraid to be alone with Mr. Bliss in a final face-to-face discussion and that he advised her to leave the office door open when she went in to talk to Mr. Bliss.
"Everyone knew him as a nice Christian man," she said of Mr. Bliss.
"I think that's why people are so shocked at what transpired. Except he wasn't nice."
Staff writer Jeff Miller contributed to this report.
Can't imagine what he'll do for a living beyond car sales.
I was pissed when I heard it this morning (on Bob and Tom, of all places).
I heard some of the same commentary from local sports reporters. Kind of makes me wonder about all those reports about what a "decent" guy Kobe Bryant is, too.
Ha! He'll be lucky to do even that.
Bliss put some great teams on the court at SMU and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them while I was in law school there, but he certainly had some real flaky players. I ran into one of the team's stars at a pay phone outside of a liquor store one day. I don't know what he was up to, but certainly had a rather guilty look on his face. Another of his SMU players had the talent to be a big time NBA player but disappeared from the baseketball scene shortly after leaving SMU. Ironically, it was the SMU football team during this time period that got the "death penalty".
Me too. Our whole community is in a state of shock and disbelief. I can tell you Bliss is a consummate actor -- he had EVERYBODY fooled. Seemed as decent and honest as the day is long.
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