Flashback: Who's the real Dave Bliss? Loyal, honorable coach or vindictive egomaniac?

Editor's note: This story first appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Aug. 24, 2003.

Certainly, their grief cannot begin to compare with that of Patrick Dennehy's loved ones, but friends of disgraced former Baylor University basketball coach Dave Bliss are also coping with a sense of loss.

There's the shock of watching his 34-year college coaching career vaporize -- poof! -- in a furnace of scandal in the weeks after Mr. Dennehy's slaying.

There's the distress of seeing a man they've long known, or thought they knew, become a pariah, the new undisputed, nationally vilified example of all that is wrong with college athletics.

Suddenly, the only Bliss portrait the public ever saw has been torn…