“Baylor is a big time university where winning is paramount.”
Yes, so paramount, in fact, that long before the recent egregious rape allegations and corresponding cover-up came much more tragic events that brought just as much shame to the Baylor athletics program.
The above quote comes from Disgraced, the new SHOWTIME Sports documentary that premieres Friday, March 31. The South By Southwest film is a stark reminder of the forgotten tragedy/scandal that hit Baylor University in 2003 — the murder of basketball star Patrick Dennehy by teammate Carlton Dotson and an ensuing attempted cover-up by the team’s head coach Dave Bliss, who tried to hide the fact he had paid Dennehy to play for his program.
Dennehy was a 6-foot-10 future NBA stud who transferred to Baylor after his sophomore year and disappeared before even playing a game with the Bears. Dotson eventually plead guilty to the murder, making it the only known instance in the history of the NCAA where one student-athlete was convicted of murdering another. And because Dennehy was given money to transfer to Baylor, his death prompted Bliss to try to cover-up the improper payments — all truly shocking stuff, events many sports fans under the age of 25 are probably unaware even happened.
“This is a complex story, told through powerful first-person accounts, about both a senseless murder and an attempted cover-up of NCAA rule violations that still reverberate within Baylor University and collegiate athletics to this day,” said Stephen Espinoza, Executive Vice President and General Manager, SHOWTIME Sports. “DISGRACED is yet another provocative, compelling and culturally relevant documentary delivered with the inside perspective that has become the hallmark of unscripted programming from SHOWTIME Sports.”
Josh Helmuth is the editor of Crave Sports.
The feature-length documentary premieres Friday, March 31 at 9PM ET/PT on SHOWTIME.
