Why is Lon Kruger honoring Dave Bliss?

I love when programs take the time to honor teams and players from the past.

Alumni games, retired jerseys, honorary assistant coaches, everything. I think that it not only is entertaining for the fans -- and hopefully the players -- but its also a terrific recruiting tool. "Once you're part of our program you'll always be a part of our program." Its not a hard sell.

That said, when a program decides to hold these honorary events, they need to make sure that people people involved are worthy. Exhibit A: Oklahoma. From the AP:

More than 100 former players turned out for a reunion weekend that featured a Legends Alumni Game on Saturday. Price and White, the backcourt tandem from the Sooners' 2002 Final Four run, played - albeit on opposite teams - and Griffin came out as a spectator.

Two of Kruger's predecessors, Kelvin Sampson and Dave Bliss, served as opposing coaches in a game that had to be decided in sudden-death overtime.

You read that right.

At an alumni game held to honor the likes of Hollis Price and Quannas White -- the two stars of Oklahoma's last Final Four team -- as well as Blake Griffin, Kruger invited back two coaches that have effectively been black-listed by the NCAA. For Sampson, calling him a persona-non-grata on the Norman campus is not necessarily fair. He got into trouble with the NCAA for making too many phone calls, a rule that was just as silly then as it is now and will not be a violation for that much longer.

Sampson I can understand.

Bliss, I cannot.

Because he is as epic of a scumbag as you will ever come across. I mention this quite a bit, but I always assume everyone knows what Bliss did. For those that don't know, back in 2003 Carlton Dotson shot and killed Patrick Dennehy, teammates on a Baylor team coached by Bliss. In an effort to try and cover-up recruiting violations he had committed -- including paying around $7,000 that wasn't paid for by Dennehy's scholarship -- Bliss tried to get his team and his coaching staff to tell investigators that Dennehy had been selling drugs to get the cash to pay for school. They also failed to tell investigators that two of Dennehy's teammates had threatened him just days before the murder.

Yeah.

That's who Lon Kruger brought in for Oklahoma's alumni game.

If it was me, I would want people to forget that Bliss had been a part of the Oklahoma program.
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Oklahoma's proposed sanctions will put the pressure on Lon Kruger

On Thursday afternoon, Oklahoma offered themselves up on the NCAA's chopping block for violations committed by assistant coach Oronde Taliaferro. If you've forgotten, Taliferro, through a financial advisor in Florida, orchestrated a payment of $3,000 to Keith "Tiny" Gallon in an effort to help Gallon pay for his high school transcripts so he can enroll in college.

Those violations led, in part, to Jeff Capel's firing as the head coach of the Sooners.

Here is what Oklahoma, who was already on probation thanks to Kelvin Sampson and his phone calls, is proposing:

Oklahoma asked the NCAA to place the program on two more years of probation, vacate its wins from a 13-18 season in 2009-10 and take away one scholarship, two official visits and 10 in-person recruiting days during the upcoming academic year.

Losing a scholarship is not a huge deal in college basketball. Teams often don't use their full allotment of 13 scholarships, and if they do, that final scholarship player is usually a walk-on that gets lucky. The recruiting sanctions -- losing two official visits and 10 in-person recruiting days -- is just as trivial. Its not an ideal situation, but its essentially a glorified slap on the wrist. And I'm not going to get into another rant about how pointless it is to vacate a season, particularly a season that everyone in Norman is more than willing to forget.

The only punishment with any juice that Oklahoma offered up is the two extra years of probation, a sanction that the program has already violated.

Considering that the Sooners qualify as repeat violators -- two major infractions in five years -- its tough for me to believe that the NCAA is going to accept their proposal. Then again, the NCAA also believes vacating a season is a major punishment, so who knows.

The only thing that I know is that the start of the Lon Kruger era in Oklahoma just got that much tougher.

I agree with Matt Norlander. Kruger had to have known that something like this was coming when he agreed to leave UNLV this spring (well, that and he doubled his old salary for the next seven years). Because as trivial as some of the sanctions that Oklahoma proposed are, their effect will get magnified by the fact that Kruger has to rebuild an Oklahoma program that has spent the past two seasons buried at the bottom of the Big 12 and isn't expected to go anywhere soon.

Convincing blue-chip recruits to be the foundation in a rebuilding process is difficult enough. Having to do so with limits on recruiting makes it that much harder. Kruger -- who will make $16.6 million over the next seven years -- has to be efficient in his recruiting. He has to find players that he has a realistic shot of getting and that can positively effect the program, and he has to make sure that those players end up at Oklahoma.

More than anything, these sanctions are going to make Kruger's margin for error microscopic.
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Tre'Von Willis dodged a bullet, but Lon Kruger didn't necessarily do anything wrong

We finally have word on what Tre'Von Willis' punishment will be.

If you remember, Willis was arrested back in June after a 28 year old Las Vegas woman accused him of choking her in her apartment. If the police report was to be believed, Willis looked like a real long shot to play this season -- it said he knocked the woman on her back and choked her for three minutes, using two hands and then his foreman, before stealing her phone.

But Willis had a much different story. He gave his side during a press conference at the Thomas & Mack Center this evening:

No choking took place. I originally agreed to go over to the young lady's house. She had promised me a little bit of money. We started to argue a little bit, and from then I grabbed her purse off of the nightstand. That's when she tried to grab the purse from me, and that's when I grabbed her hand. I knew it was wrong. From there I dumped the contents of the purse out onto the bed, and there was no money in it, and then I exited the apartment.

Tre'Von Willis got off easier than expected.
(photo credit: B/R)

Quite a bit different, right?

Willis was able to land plea deal. He received a suspended 90 day jail sentence pending a year of good behavior, must pay a $340 fine, do 100 hours of community service, and attend domestic battery counseling. Considering the accusations, a fine and some community service in exchange for a year of good behavior isn't much.

Neither is the punishment he got from head coach Lon Kruger.

Kruger said that Willis will be suspended for a minimum of 10% of UNLV's games this season, which means he will miss the first three games of the season. The catch? UNLV's two exhibition games count, which means that Willis could very well be eligible to play against Southeastern Louisiana in the Rebel's second game of the season and, more importantly, in UNLV's potential top 25 showdown with Wisconsin on November 20th in the third game of the year. Willis will also be able to practice with the team starting October 15th.

All in all, it seems like Willis dodged a bullet on this one.

This outcome likely won't sit right with a lot of people.

Every time a situation like this arises, I think back to Eric Devendorf. The former Cuse guard received a similar accusation against him during the 2008-2009 season, and Syracuse reacted by suspending from school for the rest of the year. Once the stories were untangled and the truth came out, he was reinstated after missing two games.

In a situation like the ones Willis and Devo found themselves in, can you really trust either side? Men that beat women are despicable, but there are also times where women exaggerate, or flat out lie, about an assault. Knowing this, if you are Lon Kruger, and one of your players -- who, presumably, you trust and have a strong relationship with -- steadfastly denies the accusation, isn't there a large part of you that believes him? Now, when that player gets off with a cushy plea bargain, doesn't that only reinforce your belief?

If this was your son, what would you do? He would get punished for using terrible judgement, getting himself into a bad situation, and committing an unacceptable act. Maybe you take away car privileges, ground him for a month, and implement a 9pm curfew, but you're not shipping him off to military school, right?

If I'm Kruger, and I'm in this exact situation, I'm not so sure I would have done anything different.
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