Kansas State on Sunday fired Jerome Tang, deciding to part ways with a basketball coach whose tenure began with enormous promise and ended with fans wearing bags on their heads.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
In doing so, K-State said the firing was \u201cfor cause,\u201d claiming that Tang had violated the terms of his employment contract by publicly criticizing his players for lackluster effort in a home loss to Cincinnati.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
Athletics director Gene Taylor and K-State confirmed the move in a statement Sunday evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a decision that was made in the best interest of our university and men\u2019s basketball program,” Taylor said in a statement. \u201cRecent public comments and conduct, in addition to the program\u2019s overall direction, have not aligned with K-State\u2019s standards for supporting student-athletes and representing the university. We wish Coach Tang and his family all the best moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such a tactic, if it stands, would allow K-State to avoid paying Tang an $18.7 million buyout that he would be due if the firing were based solely on wins and losses.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear whether that would hold up in a court challenge, should Tang sue. The relevant parts of his contract appear to be under the section labeled \u201cSpecific Duties and Responsibilities\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the ninth clause in that section, the contract states that the coach must be \u201cconducting themself at all times in a manner consistent with the position of head coach, an instructor of student-athletes, and an ambassador and representative of K-State Athletics and the university.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also states that Tang \u201cshall not engage in any behavior, actions, or activities that subjects coach, K-State Athletics, or the university to public disrepute, embarrassment, ridicule, or scandal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 10th clause of that section states that the coach must be \u201cestablishing, maintaining, and enforcing standards of conduct, disciplinary rules, and sanctions fairly and uniformly for the team\u2019s student-athletes to ensure academic and moral integrity while encouraging excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 11th states that Tang must be \u201cengaging in \u2014 and actively monitoring to ensure the program\u2019s coaches and employees are engaging in \u2014 fair, safe, and responsible treatment of the team\u2019s student-athletes and avoiding behavior, actions, and activities that could jeopardize a student-athlete\u2019s welfare, health, or safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments he made after the Cincinnati game: \u201cThese dudes do not deserve to wear this uniform; there will be very few of them in it next year,\u201d he said following the home blowout, a 29-point loss which stood as one of the 10-worst home losses in program history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means something to wear a K-State uniform. It means something to put on this purple\u2026 I love this place. They don\u2019t love this place, so they don\u2019t deserve to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Between Tang\u2019s postgame comments and the various bag-headed fans whose pictures went viral on social media, K-State was on display to the country for all of the wrong reasons following the midweek loss. Tang also took players\u2019 names off their jerseys for this weekend\u2019s game at Houston, where the Wildcats lost by 14 to the third-ranked Cougars.<\/p>\n
ESPN\u2019s Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser dedicated a several-minute diatribe rebuking Tang\u2019s comments during Thursday\u2019s \u201cPardon the Interuption.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDidn\u2019t Tang recruit these people?\u201d Kornheiser asked. \u201cHe\u2019s in his fourth season, so he didn\u2019t inherit any of these people. \u2026 The team he\u2019s got now, he clearly hates.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m stealing a phrase from the coach I probably admired most in my life\u2026 the late, great John Thompson, who would often say to me when I got ready to criticize somebody in The Washington Post, \u2018Hey, these are somebody\u2019s children,’\u201d Wilbon added. \u201cThey still are. Whether they get a paycheck or not. So, Tang has to remember that, or he might have to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
K-State also has had its share of off-the-court issues in Tang\u2019s tenure, including the recent domestic battery arrest of graduate assistant Mark Vital, a former Baylor player who was a star for the Bears during the end of Tang\u2019s time in Waco.<\/p>\n
Tang has also had multiple in-season player dismissals, including Nae\u2019Qwan Tomlin in Tang\u2019s second season and Achor Achor during the 2024-25 campaign.<\/p>\n
Tomlin was suspended indefinitely following a disorderly conduct arrest in Aggieville on Oct. 29, 2023. Soon after, Tomlin was dismissed from the team, a move that put Tang at odds with university president Richard Linton.<\/p>\n
The circumstances of Achor\u2019s dismissal are still unknown, but he\u2019s currently a starter for Mississippi State, a team the Wildcats beat in Kansas City earlier this season.<\/p>\n
Currently, the program sits near an all-time low. The Wildcats have opened Big 12 play 1-11, which is one of the four worst starts to conference play in school history, along with the 1922-23 (1-13), 1999-00 (1-11) seasons and the 2020-21 COVID year (1-13).<\/p>\n
Tang had a rocket ship of a first season in which K-State finished the year 26-10 with a third-place finish in the Big 12 and came within an eyelash of making the school\u2019s first Final Four since 1964.<\/p>\n
Since then, it\u2019s been fairly drastic diminishing returns. K-State is 71-56 during Tang\u2019s tenure, including a 29-38 mark in Big 12 play. Barring a miracle run through the Big 12 Tournament, K-State will miss the NCAA Tournament for a third straight season.<\/p>\n
Bruce Weber, Tang\u2019s immediate predecessor, was also fired after missing the tournament for three straight seasons.<\/p>\n
The strategy comes with some risk. If Tang does decide to challenge the firing in court, K-State could be looking at a costly, protracted legal battle that could still end in the Wildcats paying the fourth-year head coach his buyout.<\/p>\n
Back in 2024, following Tang\u2019s name surfacing in connection to the job opening at Arkansas, Taylor gave the Wildcat head coach a contract extension through 2031 and a significant pay bump.<\/p>\n
If K-State had chosen to keep Tang for another year, his buyout would have only dropped roughly $3 million to $15.75. It would\u2019ve continued to drop by around $3 million for the next three years, ending at $4.4 million (or the remaining unpaid base salary) after May 1, 2030.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t include the buyouts of Tang\u2019s staff or the amount needed to hire a new coaching staff.<\/p>\n
There is also a provision that Tang\u2019s buyout would\u2019ve reduced by 50% for the following 12 months if Taylor were no longer K-State\u2019s athletics director, but that only applied to the amount Tang would owe the university if he chose to leave before the end of his contract. It would not have affected the athletics department\u2019s buyout amount if K-State chose to terminate Tang without cause.<\/p>\n
K-State Athletics is already in a budget crunch after the addition of revenue-sharing for athletes, which amounted to $20.5 million this year and will increase by 4% heading into next year. And even before that, a nearly $19 million payout wouldn\u2019t exactly have been in K-State\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
The Wildcats have six more games to play in the regular season, including a matchup with Baylor, a team that Tang spent 19 seasons with as an assistant before coming to Manhattan, on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
K-State has not announced who will serve as the team\u2019s interim head coach for the final stretch of the season as of publication. A national coaching search is underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kansas State on Sunday fired Jerome Tang, deciding to part ways with a basketball coach whose tenure began…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[44930,92310,99],"class_list":["post-471165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-big-12-conference","tag-kentucky-wildcats-men","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}