Ultra Peanut
08-06-2008, 11:51 AM
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=oneil_dana&id=3371852
Apparently, taping a coach when he's trying to get his players to frame a murdered teammate as a drug-dealer, after being threatened with being fired for not going along, is unforgivable in the world of college basketball.
Rouse in oblivion five years after Baylor scandal
By Dana O'Neil
Every night it's the same. He leaves his one-bedroom apartment, hops in his 10-year-old car and clocks in to work at the factory in Wichita Falls, Texas. For eight hours, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., he makes airplane parts.
When his shift is over, he gets back in his beat-up Toyota Corolla and goes back to his depressing apartment. He sleeps until 2 p.m. and in the afternoon, he might drop a few more résumés in the mail.
He is beyond broke. His credit cards are maxed out, his credit ruined. He has humbled himself and borrowed from his mother, tapping her out almost as badly as himself. Desperately in need of overtime pay, he has not taken more than two days off in a month since the fall.
This was not Abar Rouse's plan. For six years after graduating from Baylor University, he chased his dream of becoming a top-level college basketball coach. He lived in the tiny outposts necessary to climb the coaching ladder before landing at his alma mater, finally an assistant coach at a Division I university.
Three months later, it was over.
While Baylor was reeling with the disappearance and death of Patrick Dennehy, Rouse secretly recorded a conversation with head coach, Dave Bliss. The conversation exposed Bliss' plan to paint Dennehy, the murder victim, as a drug dealer in order to cover up Bliss' NCAA-violating payment to Dennehy.
The tape, part of an NCAA investigation, threw acid on an already painful wound, marrying the devastating circumstances of a teammate-on-teammate murder with NCAA sanctions and a heinous act of self-preservation by a coach whose deceit decimated a basketball program and stained a university.
Since then, Baylor has resurrected itself from the ashes, riding the wave of a feel-good story into the NCAA tournament last season. Carlton Dotson, Dennehy's teammate and murderer, is behind bars. Even Bliss is resuscitating his career. He's working with Athletes in Action and may coach the group's traveling team this summer. This year, as a speaker at the coaches' convention, he went back to the Final Four for the first time since 2003.
As the fifth anniversary of Dennehy's disappearance nears next month, the only loose ends belong to Rouse.
Hundreds of coaches milled round San Antonio's Riverwalk in early April wearing logoed golf shirts to proudly announce their school affiliation during the Final Four, which doubles as a convention for the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
Rouse, who lives in the same state, wasn't one of them. No one could stop him from coming, but he also knew he was not welcome.
In an occupation in which rule-breakers repeatedly are given second chances -- Todd Bozeman paid $30,000 to a recruit while head coach at Cal and this year coached Morgan State; Indiana hired Kelvin Sampson, Oklahoma baggage notwithstanding; and Sampson's assistant, Rob Senderoff, who took the fall at IU for Sampson, was recently hired at Kent State -- Rouse is a basketball pariah. He said he has been blackballed, labeled a snitch and a turncoat.
Many coaches, including Hall of Famers Jim Boeheim and Mike Krzyzewski, have said that Rouse had crossed the line. "If one of my assistants would tape every one of my conversations with me not knowing it, there's no way he would be on my staff," Krzyzewski told "Outside the Lines" in 2003. The rank and file has fallen in step.
Despite beating down seemingly every door and mailing out countless résumés, Rouse has had only one basketball job in the past five years, a graduate assistant position at Division II Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls. In October he made the agonizing decision to quit, unable to survive on the $8,000 annual salary. More (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=oneil_dana&id=3371852)
Apparently, taping a coach when he's trying to get his players to frame a murdered teammate as a drug-dealer, after being threatened with being fired for not going along, is unforgivable in the world of college basketball.
Rouse in oblivion five years after Baylor scandal
By Dana O'Neil
Every night it's the same. He leaves his one-bedroom apartment, hops in his 10-year-old car and clocks in to work at the factory in Wichita Falls, Texas. For eight hours, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., he makes airplane parts.
When his shift is over, he gets back in his beat-up Toyota Corolla and goes back to his depressing apartment. He sleeps until 2 p.m. and in the afternoon, he might drop a few more résumés in the mail.
He is beyond broke. His credit cards are maxed out, his credit ruined. He has humbled himself and borrowed from his mother, tapping her out almost as badly as himself. Desperately in need of overtime pay, he has not taken more than two days off in a month since the fall.
This was not Abar Rouse's plan. For six years after graduating from Baylor University, he chased his dream of becoming a top-level college basketball coach. He lived in the tiny outposts necessary to climb the coaching ladder before landing at his alma mater, finally an assistant coach at a Division I university.
Three months later, it was over.
While Baylor was reeling with the disappearance and death of Patrick Dennehy, Rouse secretly recorded a conversation with head coach, Dave Bliss. The conversation exposed Bliss' plan to paint Dennehy, the murder victim, as a drug dealer in order to cover up Bliss' NCAA-violating payment to Dennehy.
The tape, part of an NCAA investigation, threw acid on an already painful wound, marrying the devastating circumstances of a teammate-on-teammate murder with NCAA sanctions and a heinous act of self-preservation by a coach whose deceit decimated a basketball program and stained a university.
Since then, Baylor has resurrected itself from the ashes, riding the wave of a feel-good story into the NCAA tournament last season. Carlton Dotson, Dennehy's teammate and murderer, is behind bars. Even Bliss is resuscitating his career. He's working with Athletes in Action and may coach the group's traveling team this summer. This year, as a speaker at the coaches' convention, he went back to the Final Four for the first time since 2003.
As the fifth anniversary of Dennehy's disappearance nears next month, the only loose ends belong to Rouse.
Hundreds of coaches milled round San Antonio's Riverwalk in early April wearing logoed golf shirts to proudly announce their school affiliation during the Final Four, which doubles as a convention for the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
Rouse, who lives in the same state, wasn't one of them. No one could stop him from coming, but he also knew he was not welcome.
In an occupation in which rule-breakers repeatedly are given second chances -- Todd Bozeman paid $30,000 to a recruit while head coach at Cal and this year coached Morgan State; Indiana hired Kelvin Sampson, Oklahoma baggage notwithstanding; and Sampson's assistant, Rob Senderoff, who took the fall at IU for Sampson, was recently hired at Kent State -- Rouse is a basketball pariah. He said he has been blackballed, labeled a snitch and a turncoat.
Many coaches, including Hall of Famers Jim Boeheim and Mike Krzyzewski, have said that Rouse had crossed the line. "If one of my assistants would tape every one of my conversations with me not knowing it, there's no way he would be on my staff," Krzyzewski told "Outside the Lines" in 2003. The rank and file has fallen in step.
Despite beating down seemingly every door and mailing out countless résumés, Rouse has had only one basketball job in the past five years, a graduate assistant position at Division II Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls. In October he made the agonizing decision to quit, unable to survive on the $8,000 annual salary. More (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=oneil_dana&id=3371852)