The first high-major job to open this cycle in men’s college basketball is Kansas State, which parted ways with Jerome Tang on Sunday evening midway through a miserable 10–15 season. It’s an astonishing fall from grace for a coach once seemingly destined for stardom: Tang was the Big 12 Coach of the Year in his debut 2023 season after orchestrating a monster turnaround and led the Wildcats to the Elite Eight, and was a hot name for some of the biggest jobs in the sport both that spring and in 2024.
Things soured quickly though in Manhattan, Kans., missing the NCAA tournament in 2024, finishing below .500 in ’25 despite a huge NIL payroll and following with an even more miserable start to ’26 even with another significant NIL injection into the roster. It forced athletic director Gene Taylor’s hand to make a move, even with Tang’s massive buyout of north of $18 million. The school is reportedly attempting to fire him for cause to void the buyout per The Mercury, though that may simply serve as a negotiating tactic to create a settlement. Sources indicated in recent weeks that Tang had lost nearly all support from a donor base that bankrolled his expensive transfer hauls of the last two years, and that is now often the death knell in this new world of college athletics.
