We’re going about this Jerome Tang thing the wrong way.
This isn’t about basketball, or the lack of a winning team, or hurt feelings or Tang embarrassing a university.
This is about the underperforming football team at Kansas State.
Because when football isn’t right, nothing else matters. When you’re staring at K-State paying Tang what is believed to be the largest buyout for a coach in college basketball history, the mind immediately moves to where that money could be better spent.
Like, I don’t know, the football team.
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When Chris Klieman decided after last season that his health couldn’t take the unruly state of college football, and that Kansas State wasn’t helping matters by how it approached player procurement for the front porch of the university’s sports programs, he retired and left no doubt why.
“You guys are smart enough to realize that those who have the most money, have the best players,” Klieman said after K-State’s regular season final against Colorado. “And they’re spending $40-50 million. The ones like us that don’t, man, we’ve got to scratch and fight and claw.”
So K-State accepted the resignation of the best coach it could possibly ask for since Bill Snyder’s second retirement, and hired former Wildcats great Collin Klein.
I don’t think I’m breaking news by saying K-State had to have made significant financial promises to Klein to get him to take the job. You’re not winning at a high level in the Big 12 if you’re not spending, and Klein could’ve waited at Texas A&M until the right job opened at an SEC school.
We now circle back to Tang, who led K-State to the NCAA tournament after his first season in 2023, and then signed a lucrative seven-year extension. The program has struggled since, and K-State has every right to terminate the contract of a struggling coach.
Then pay him what he is owed on the remainder of his deal: $18.7 million.
Now here’s where it gets fuzzy, and quite frankly, more than disturbing.
After an ugly home loss to Cincinnati, Tang ripped into his players, saying they “don’t deserve to wear this uniform” and “they don’t love this place, so they don’t deserve to be here.”
Then he said he’d wear a paper bag on his head, too, if he were a K-State fan.
If John Calipari said this at Arkansas, if Rick Pitino said this at St. Johns, they’d be celebrated for not pandering to today’s lavished student-athletes.
Hell, Mick Cronin does it nearly every game at UCLA — win or lose.
But now — now — K-State is deep in its feelings. Now we’re supposed to believe the hardscrabble, no guts, no glory athletics program is offended by a basketball coach spitting truth to a bunch of players paid to play a game?
Mommy, the mean man said I won’t be around much longer because I’m not playing defense and giving effort!
I’m gonna puke.
Make no mistake, K-State took the fiscally prudent road out. Even with all the inherent potholes of trying to fire for cause.
K-State officials say Tang ripping his team embarrassed the university, and is just cause for dismissal. Uh, folks, your basketball team embarrassed the university.
And this decision is a close second.
By firing for cause, K-State is trying to avoid losing millions in buyout money, and that $18-and-change million owed to Tang sure would look good supporting the new coach of a football program that won six games in 2025.
The football program that has again fallen behind in the Big 12, this time after an elite coach could take it no more. The state of college football is bad enough, it’s worse when the financial support isn’t there.
So you better believe K-State is going down this road, reputation be damned. They’ll take it to court and hope Tang wants to coach again, and just wants a resolution to the whole mess.
Pay him half of what they owe him (or less), and use the rest to support the one program that fuels all in Manhattan. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before.
Tennessee self-reported NCAA violations to get out of paying Jeremy Pruitt’s buyout, paying an $8 million fine to the NCAA instead. Michigan State did the same to Mel Tucker when he was accused of sexual harassment — a case from the alleged victim that was later thrown out in court.
This is how universities clean up their contractual messes: by starting fires in the other corner as diversionary tactics.
I’m guessing Snyder, the man who orchestrated the greatest turnaround in college football history at woebegone K-State, told players on some of those early teams in Manhattan that they didn’t deserve to wear the purple. Told many that they weren’t coming back the following season.
After a one-point loss to TCU in 2018 that included a missed extra point and a critical fumble by wide receiver Isaiah Zuber, Snyder said, “It wasn’t special teams as much as it was an individual.”
And that was tame compared to how he held players accountable.
But Snyder is a hero in the heartland. Has a statute in front of the stadium that bears his name.
Hell, he probably puked, too, when he heard the news.
Until he learned it could help the football program.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: K-State isn’t firing Jerome Tang for cause, it’s to help football program
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