25 worst coaching hires in the history of college basketball

1. Dave Bliss – Baylor (1999-2003)

• 61-57 record (4 seasons)

There’s just one last thing to know about bad head coaching hires, and it’ll be hard to top what happened at Baylor back near the beginning of the century. Historically, the Bears were not a fantastic program; they had a little bit of success many decades ago but were mainly coasting along in the SWC and Big 12 without much going on. Coaches came and went, leading them to another search in 1999 after a winless run through Big 12 play.

The choice was Dave Bliss, a man who had been around the college basketball world for many years already at that point. He had been spent many years as an assistant, including on Bob Knight’s first staff at Indiana, and had been head coach at Oklahoma, SMU, and New Mexico, leading all three to NCAA Tournament appearances throughout the years. Having led the Lobos the Big Dance in six of the last seven seasons, he accepted the new challenge of Baylor in 1999, but it’s an acceptance that everyone now regrets.

There was nothing remarkable about Bliss’s on-court coaching, so we’ll focus on the scandal instead, one of the biggest in sports. One of Baylor’s players Patrick Dennehy was murdered by former player Carlton Dotson, and Bliss’s response was to paint Dennehy as a drug dealer to hide the fact that Bliss was paying his tuition illegally. There was several other NCAA violations at play and this scandal was not only horrific but destroyed Baylor, cost Bliss his career and a 10-year show-cause penalty. The very fact that Scott Drew just led this program to a national championship is a testament to Drew, seeing as how his first few seasons he was dealing with the fallout of this tragedy.

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