Kansas State reportedly reaches $12 million settlement with former coach Jerome Tang over contested firing
· Yahoo Sports
Kansas State has reached a settlement with former men’s basketball coach Jerome Tang, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, more than seven months after the school fired the coach.
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The deal will reportedly pay Tang $12 million of the $18.7 million buyout he was owned from his contract. Tang is currently working an assistant coach for Baylor under head coach Scott Drew.
Kansas State let Tang go in February, ending a four-year tenure in which he accrued a 71-57 record with a single NCAA Tournament appearance in his first year. The Wildcats attempted to fire him for cause in an attempt to get out of that eight-figure buyout.
The school’s cause was comments Tang made in the wake of his penultimate game with the team, a 91-62 drubbing at home at the hands of unranked Cincinnati. After the game, Tang lambasted his team and said he was embarrassed for Kansas State and its fans:
"This was embarrassing. These dudes did not deserve to wear this uniform. There will be very few in it next year. I'm embarrassed for the university, I'm embarrassed for our fans, our student section. We have practice at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. We will get this thing right. I have no answers and no words."
Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor claimed those comments constituted grounds for termination:
“There’s language in his contract that addresses certain things that can potentially bring embarrassment,” Taylor responded when asked to specify the reasons for Tang being fired for cause. “Basically, his comments about the student-athletes and the negative reaction to those comments from a lot of sources, both nationally and locally, is where I thought we needed to make the decision.”
Tang immediately promised to fight Kansas State over the buyout it was attempting to withhold, and it now appears he will be walking away with the majority of it.