Waco, Texas ? Former Baylor basketball coach Dave Bliss tried to cover up alleged NCAA violations by telling assistant coaches and players to lie and say a slain player had been dealing drugs to pay for school, secretly recorded audiotapes reveal.

The recordings were made by an assistant coach who turned them over Friday to Baylor and NCAA investigators. Copies of the tapes were obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

“The tapes reveal a desperate man trying to figure out how to cover himself and to cover up” NCAA violations, said Kirk Watson, counsel for Baylor’s in-house investigations committee.

Bliss talked to two or three players about the scheme, although only one took the phony story to investigators and he has since recanted. Watson would not identify the player.

Neither Bliss nor any of his assistant coaches actually used the fake story with investigators, Watson said.

The review committee found no evidence Patrick Dennehy was involved in drug dealing.

Watson said the tapes would be turned over to prosecutors to determine whether a crime had been committed.

Neither Bliss nor assistant coach Abar Rouse, who made the tapes, could be reached for comment Saturday. Attempts to reach Baylor players and other assistant coaches Saturday were unsuccessful.

Bliss, however, acknowledged the cover-up to the Star-Telegram and The Dallas Morning News in Saturday’s editions.

“The bizarre circumstances painted me into a corner and I chose the wrong way to react,” he said. “I have cooperated completely and will continue to do so because I have disappointed a lot of people.”

Bliss was among 10 Baylor officials to attend Dennehy’s memorial service Aug. 7, the day before the coach resigned.

“I keep going back to him shaking my hand and me thanking him for coming,” Dennehy’s stepfather, Brian Brabazon, said in a telephone interview Saturday after learning of the tapes. “Had I had even an inkling of this, I would have grabbed his hand and his throat and thrown him against the wall and beat him.”

Earlier this month, Baylor President Robert B. Sloan Jr. said an internal review found two players had received improper tuition payments and Bliss had admitted involvement. The tapes reveal an attempt to divert investigators away from those improper payments.

“I think the thing we want to do — and you think about this — if there’s a way we can create the perception that Pat may have been a dealer,” Bliss is heard saying on one tape. “Even if we had to kind of make some things look a little better than they are, that can save us.”

Rouse, who joined the Baylor staff June 1, said he made the secret recordings after Bliss told him he would lose his job if he didn’t help carry out the deception.

Bill Underwood, a member of the Baylor internal committee, told the Morning News the panel also found Bliss wrote scripts for players and coaches to review before talking with authorities.