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.
In doing so, K-State said the firing was “for cause,” 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.
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.
It’s 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 “Specific Duties and Responsibilities”.
In the ninth clause in that section, the contract states that the coach must be “conducting 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.”
It also states that Tang “shall not engage in any behavior, actions, or activities that subjects coach, K-State Athletics, or the university to public disrepute, embarrassment, ridicule, or scandal.”
The 10th clause of that section states that the coach must be “establishing, maintaining, and enforcing standards of conduct, disciplinary rules, and sanctions fairly and uniformly for the team’s student-athletes to ensure academic and moral integrity while encouraging excellence.”
The 11th states that Tang must be “engaging in — and actively monitoring to ensure the program’s coaches and employees are engaging in — fair, safe, and responsible treatment of the team’s student-athletes and avoiding behavior, actions, and activities that could jeopardize a student-athlete’s welfare, health, or safety.”
The comments he made after the Cincinnati game: “These dudes do not deserve to wear this uniform; there will be very few of them in it next year,” he said following the home blowout, a 29-point loss which stood as one of the 10-worst home losses in program history.
“It means something to wear a K-State uniform. It means something to put on this purple… I love this place. They don’t love this place, so they don’t deserve to be here.”
Between Tang’s 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’ names off their jerseys for this weekend’s game at Houston, where the Wildcats lost by 14 to the third-ranked Cougars.
ESPN’s Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser dedicated a several-minute diatribe rebuking Tang’s comments during Thursday’s “Pardon the Interuption.”
“Didn’t Tang recruit these people?” Kornheiser asked. “He’s in his fourth season, so he didn’t inherit any of these people. … The team he’s got now, he clearly hates.”
“I’m stealing a phrase from the coach I probably admired most in my life… the late, great John Thompson, who would often say to me when I got ready to criticize somebody in The Washington Post, ‘Hey, these are somebody’s children,’” Wilbon added. “They still are. Whether they get a paycheck or not. So, Tang has to remember that, or he might have to go.”
K-State also has had its share of off-the-court issues in Tang’s 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’s time in Waco.
Tang has also had multiple in-season player dismissals, including Nae’Qwan Tomlin in Tang’s second season and Achor Achor during the 2024-25 campaign.
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.
The circumstances of Achor’s dismissal are still unknown, but he’s currently a starter for Mississippi State, a team the Wildcats beat in Kansas City earlier this season.
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).
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’s first Final Four since 1964.
Since then, it’s been fairly drastic diminishing returns. K-State is 71-56 during Tang’s 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.
Bruce Weber, Tang’s immediate predecessor, was also fired after missing the tournament for three straight seasons.
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.
Back in 2024, following Tang’s name surfacing in connection to the job opening at Arkansas, athletics director Gene Taylor gave the Wildcat head coach a contract extension through 2031 and a significant pay bump.
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’ve 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.
That doesn’t include the buyouts of Tang’s staff or the amount needed to hire a new coaching staff.
There is also a provision that Tang’s buyout would’ve reduced by 50% for the following 12 months if Taylor were no longer K-State’s 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’s buyout amount if K-State chose to terminate Tang without cause.
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’t exactly have been in K-State’s budget.
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.
K-State has not announced who will serve as the team’s interim head coach for the final stretch of the season as of publication.
