K-State’s Culture and Success Derive from its People
Jan 31, 2023 | Sports Extra, Athletics
By: D. Scott Fritchen
Gene Taylor is typically easy to spot at Kansas State men's basketball games. Donned in a white K-State quarter zip, Taylor normally occupies the last seat at the table across from the opposing bench at Bramlage Coliseum. The Kansas State director of athletics munches on popcorn. Some people eat popcorn at the movies. This is Taylor's movie.
And this 2022-23 K-State movie continues to be a hit.
K-State men's basketball, picked 10th in the Big 12 Conference, is ranked seventh nationally this week. At 18-3 overall and 6-2 in the Big 12, the Wildcats are off to their best start in 50 years, visit No. 8 Kansas on Tuesday at 7 p.m. (ESPN+), and remain one of the top stories in college sports. First-year head coach Jerome Tang has garnered midseason mention as a national coach-of-the-year candidate. And the crowd, man, the crowd is loud and proud, and a sellout every night at Bramlage Coliseum, and the K-State student section is one of the best in the country, and with each day another memory is made of a season seemingly steering toward K-State lore.
Not too long ago, the K-State football team, picked fifth in the league preseason poll, captured the Big 12 Championship in storybook fashion — a 31-28 overtime victory against No. 3 TCU at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The Wildcats went on to play No. 5 Alabama in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, the program's first New Year's Day Bowl in a decade. K-State, 10-4, finished No. 14 in the AP Top 25 Poll, its highest ranking to end a season since 2014.
Some Power 5 schools would kill to have one top-revenue sport earn a league title. K-State could potentially have two its two biggest teams claim Big 12 trophies in 2022-23.
"You kind of pinch yourself, really," Taylor says. "Obviously, winning the Big 12 and knowing how hard a championship is at this level, and in this conference, watching us win and watching that celebration, and being in one of the biggest bowls in college football, and playing Alabama — and then rolling into basketball season, and the energy and excitement of our fans? You've got to pinch yourself and hold onto it as long as you can, because unfortunately, in this business, it doesn't last forever."
In the realm of the Power 5 conferences, there are few programs that currently have the joint success that the Wildcats are experiencing in football and men's basketball. As of Sunday, Tennessee and Alabama each owned a 29-5 record between football and men's hoops, Clemson, TCU and Georgia were each 29-7, and K-State and Purdue were 28-7, and UCLA was 26-8, followed by Texas and USC were at 26-9.
"I was hopeful we'd have a good football season in just talking to Chris and with what we had coming back," Taylor says. "I didn't necessarily expect the Big 12 Championship, but I thought we were going to have a pretty good year. Clearly the Big 12 Championship was the icing, the cherry on top — you name it, it was that.
"With Jerome, knowing what he was facing coming in with two returners sticking around and having to build that team, to say that I expected us to be sitting here, I didn't see that coming. I'm very happy for Jerome, the team, and us as a program. I felt that he would get it going. I felt it might take a while and that we'd probably be in a position where we might be playing for a chance to get into the NCAA Tournament, but the fact that we are sitting where we are right now is phenomenal."
Taylor rarely sat while he was growing up. The son of a high school basketball coach, Taylor busied himself inside of high school gyms for as long as he can remember. Taylor was born in Morenci, Arizona. His family eventually moved about two hours south to Willcox, a town that today has a population of 3,200 people, where he saw his father lead his teams to multiple state championships. Taylor rode with his father on the yellow school bus to high school games.
"I remember never getting a perfect attendance record because we always missed a day of school for the high school basketball championship," Taylor says.
Basketball was Taylor's first love. Although he excelled in football and baseball, Taylor was cut from his high school basketball team his senior year. That's when he assumed his first administrative role. His basketball coach asked him to serve as team manager — a role that Taylor also assumed for the men's basketball team when he attended Arizona State University.
Taylor was uncertain about an academic major, but he knew that he wanted to be involved in the business world. He believed hotel and restaurant management would be an ideal route. Arizona State didn't offer that exact major, but Taylor would benefit from the business and financial curriculum.
"Once I started, I just stayed with it," Taylor says. "I didn't want to get out of it."
However, it appeared that might change when an Arizona State associate athletic director asked Taylor, "Have you ever thought about getting into athletic administration?" Taylor served as his summer intern. Then things took another twist. Taylor decided to earn his master's degree in sports administration, but walked into his first class and said, "I'm done with school. I can't do this."
During this time, Taylor was also serving as a bartender and door host — "Basically, I was a bouncer," Taylor says — at a popular restaurant chain. His passion for the restaurant industry led him to become a manager for four years.
Then athletics entered the picture again.
"I said, 'I have to get out of this business and get back,'" Taylor says. "A friend of mine, who was an undergraduate student with me, had stayed in the athletic business while I went into the restaurant business. He worked in the ticket office at Arizona State, and moved to Washington State, and was living in Miami as the director of ticket operations. I asked him, 'How do I get back into the business?' He said, 'Come down here and get your master's and I'll get you a job.'"
Taylor, a 1980 business management graduate of Arizona State, earned his master's degree in sports administration from St. Thomas University in Florida in 1985.
Taylor served at SMU as a ticket office assistant (1985-86). He served as administrative assistant, assistant ticket manager, ticket manager, assistant AD for tickets/operations, and as an associate athletics director at the Naval Academy (1986-2001). His tenure at Navy included serving as commissioner of the five-team Collegiate Sprint Football League, comprised of Army, Navy, Penn, Princeton and Cornell.
He took over as athletics director at North Dakota State in 2001 and led the program through the reclassification to Division I from Division II and secured conference affiliations for all 16 sports. He became deputy athletics director at the University of Iowa in 2014, where he stayed until then-K-State President Richard Myers hired him to lead the Wildcats in April 2017.
"I really pretty much started at the ground floor as a manager in the equipment room at Arizona State and on the ground floor in the ticket office and business office," Taylor says. "Once you get to an AD job, you get a lot of perks and must remember that there are a lot of really great people who work a lot of hours to make sure you're successful.
"For me, it's about being good to people and to treat people fair and to be honest. My dad was always one of making sure that you're honest and do everything the right way. I always thought if you treat people the right way and work really hard then good things will come."
Today, Taylor is regarded as one of the top athletic directors in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Recently, K-State football has made four bowl appearances, men's basketball advanced to the 2018 Elite Eight and shared the 2019 Big 12 Championship, women's basketball went to two NCAA Tournaments, and women's track and field won back-to-back Big 12 Outdoor Championships.
Under Taylor, K-State has implemented a department-wide facility master plan that has benefitted the baseball and women's soccer programs in addition to Building Champions, a $126.5 million initiative focused on the south end zone of Bill Snyder Family Stadium, the new Morgan Family Volleyball Arena, an Olympic training center and the Shamrock Football Practice Facility. Overall pledges and cash gifts to the department during the 2022 fiscal year totaled a record $58.9 million, of which $20.4 million was designated for the Ahearn Fund annual giving program and surpassing its budgeted goal previous record of $18.9 million in fiscal year 2019. Included in the $20.4 million in annual giving was a department-record $801,000 raised during the Powercat Auction. The department also received $42.6 million in cash giving, marking only the third time in history it has eclipsed the $40 million mark.
Academically, football, men's golf, women's golf, tennis and volleyball programs all earned Big 12-leading graduation-rate figures, and K-State's all-sport graduation rate of 93% marked the highest in department history, as the NCAA released its latest graduation rate data in November.
"I tell our student-athletes all the time that for me, obviously, success on the field is important, clearly, and fans love it, and they love what coaches do, and athletes come here to be successful, but for me, when I can go to our donors and alums and talk about what they're doing outside of competition in terms of community service, academics, graduation rates, all those things, that tells me everybody that comes to work every day is doing it for the right reasons — to make sure our student-athletes have a great experience and have an opportunity to either continue their career within sports or earn a degree," Taylor says. "Coaches are taking the right approach. We have a great support staff in terms of academics and everything else to help these kids.
"I can't be more proud of how things operate around here because of the people we have coming to work every day."
But what are the odds, really? And what are those odds, that in this day in age in collegiate athletics, within a four-year span, an athletics director would hire a first-time FBS head football coach, and a first-time Division I head men's basketball coach, and reach such heights of success? That's what Taylor has done.
"It really comes down to the kind of people they are," Taylor says. "I knew Chris from North Dakota State, who he was, what he believed in, how he treated people, and the type of coach he was. I didn't know Jerome, but I knew people who did know him, and everybody said, 'He's just a tremendous guy.'
"Both Chris and Jerome are phenomenal individuals."
Taylor cannot pinpoint the exact first time that he met Klieman, but the two became better acquainted when Klieman, a North Dakota State defensive backs coach, was promoted to defensive coordinator in 2012. When NDSU head coach Craig Bohl announced his decision to leave the Bison, which he had steered to multiple FCS national titles, Taylor believed that Klieman could be a candidate to replace Bohl.
Bohl told Taylor that he was going to take the Wyoming head coach position after a 38-7 victory over Furman in a FCS second-round playoff game at the Fargodome in December 2013.
"Chris was one of the coaches I was interested in," Taylor says. "We had the playoff game on Friday night and Craig announced that he was leaving, and I talked to another candidate who wasn't interested, and Chris wanted to take a run at the job. The game was over at 10 p.m. and we made it to my house at around midnight. We went to my basement and talked until 3 a.m. or 3:30 a.m. Chris was so passionate about his plan. He said, 'Gene, what are your expectations for me as a first-year head coach if you offer me the job?' I said, 'Chris, I'll tell you two things. I'll tell you my expectations and the expectations of the fan base. We just won three national championships in a row. The team that won the last one finished 16-0 and there are 25 graduating seniors. My expectation is you build a team that gets us into the playoffs and makes a run. The fan base expectation is you win a national championship. If you can handle both of those, particularly the latter, you'll be successful here.'
"Sure enough, Chris took them to Frisco and won four titles out of five years. By that time I had moved onto Kansas State. But that told me Chris wasn't afraid of challenges and expectations and understanding how to take a program with success and put his own mark on it."
Klieman's success at NDSU, coupled by what Taylor knew of him, made Klieman a candidate for the K-State position in 2018.
"I knew Chris, right, and I felt pretty strongly that he could be the guy, but there were a lot of other candidates out there who were really good candidates," Taylor says. "I wanted to be sure we spoke with the best people available, and we spoke with some really good candidates. It came down to two or three guys who were all very similar in terms of success, how they interviewed, and all brought a little something different to the table. I remember we were sitting here on a Sunday night going through the candidates, and President Myers said, 'Gene, you're the AD. We have two really good candidates and a third one who's really good as well. It's your call.'
"Because I knew Chris, I said, 'You know what, based on what I know about this guy, I know he's going to be successful.' Obviously, we went with him. In my gut, I felt that at the end of the day he was going to rise to the top above all the other candidates."
Taylor pauses.
"And that's what he did."
Fast-forward to last March and Taylor knew he had a decision to make. K-State men's basketball had finished 10th, 10th and ninth in the Big 12 standings over the last three years. Fan enthusiasm was down. The program needed a reboot. Taylor struck gold with the energetic and charismatic Tang, who in 19 years as assistant coach and associate head coach under Scott Drew helped transform Baylor into a national powerhouse and capture the 2021 National Championship.
"I heard the name Jerome Tang and obviously did a little research because I saw him a couple times when Baylor played here," Taylor says. "I just remember his presence on the bench. He was really involved, like really involved. I had a friend of mine who worked at Baylor, and I called her and said, 'Tell me about Jerome Tang.' She said, 'You have to talk with him. He's unbelievable.' So we were in Kansas City and obviously had made the decision to move forward and find a new head coach, and Baylor was still playing. We brought in Jerome and he was the first guy we spoke with. He came in and his energy was through the roof and his personality was infectious. We were there for an hour. We talked with two or three guys in Kansas City, but when Jerome Tang left the room, I told our people, 'That guy just set the bar. If we find somebody who can get over that bar, we've got a really, really good candidate. If not, this guy is going to be really good for us.'
"Ultimately, he had us to his house and he blew us away in his house. When we talked basketball, some of the stuff he talked about, I was like, 'OK, this guy really gets it.' Who he was as a person? Wow. He had an immediate impact on me."
Tang had a vision for the K-State basketball culture.
"He talked in the interview about engaging the students and trying to get us back to the Octagon of Doom," Taylor says. "He said, 'I remember walking in as an opponent and we didn't want to play here at times.' He wanted to do everything he could to bring it back. The chant, he wanted more than anything for that to go away, because that wasn't him as a person and us as a program.
"He single-handedly so far has been able to change the narrative and that's been phenomenal."
As for Taylor's favorite memories so far during this 2022-23 year between football and men's basketball?
"For football, the Big 12 Championship game," Taylor says. "I was in my hotel room (as a member of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee). I just remember the elation. Those guys started out the season saying, 'Let's go win the Big 12.' It kind of started when we beat LSU (in the Texas Bowl). And we had such good individuals. You take Deuce Vaughn and Felix Anudike-Uzomah and Will Howard and Adrian Martinez and the ups and downs and how everyone stayed together, and who they are as individuals and as a team, that's really fun to see them have success.
"For basketball, I just remember we had five guys on the team, and I wondered how we could play a season with five guys. Tang just kept telling me, 'We're going to be fine, Gene, we're going to be fine. We're going to get into the NCAA Tournament.' I said, 'Alright.' Then another time I even asked Tang, 'Coach are you nervous? You have seven guys.' He said, "We're going to find the right dudes. We're not bringing just anybody here. We're going to find the right dudes. Trust me.'
"Then to see where it is today, it's phenomenal. I just sit back and enjoy every minute of it."
Usually with a box of popcorn.
The outlook is bright for both K-State football and men's basketball — and for K-State athletics as a whole. The football program returns a multitude of starters and has signed one of its best recruiting classes in the last 20 years. The basketball program continues to head toward the NCAA Tournament and remains one of the top stories this college basketball season. Couple that fundraising and facilities and graduation rates, and there's plenty for Taylor and his staff to be proud about in Manhattan.
As for whether K-State should be considered one of the league's top forces, as the Big 12 moves forward and unveils its new-look conference in 2023-24?
"I don't know how we can't be," Taylor says. "We had a visitor on campus, the president of West Virginia. President Richard Linton invited him on campus and he spoke to a couple groups and apparently President Linton took him on a little tour of our facilities and he was extremely impressed. When you look at our facilities that are going to be done here collectively in one location for the most part and are pretty brand new, when you look at the success that we've had, the type of community we have, and the types of coaches we have, I don't know how we can't be considered a force in the Big 12."
Gene Taylor is typically easy to spot at Kansas State men's basketball games. Donned in a white K-State quarter zip, Taylor normally occupies the last seat at the table across from the opposing bench at Bramlage Coliseum. The Kansas State director of athletics munches on popcorn. Some people eat popcorn at the movies. This is Taylor's movie.
And this 2022-23 K-State movie continues to be a hit.
K-State men's basketball, picked 10th in the Big 12 Conference, is ranked seventh nationally this week. At 18-3 overall and 6-2 in the Big 12, the Wildcats are off to their best start in 50 years, visit No. 8 Kansas on Tuesday at 7 p.m. (ESPN+), and remain one of the top stories in college sports. First-year head coach Jerome Tang has garnered midseason mention as a national coach-of-the-year candidate. And the crowd, man, the crowd is loud and proud, and a sellout every night at Bramlage Coliseum, and the K-State student section is one of the best in the country, and with each day another memory is made of a season seemingly steering toward K-State lore.
Not too long ago, the K-State football team, picked fifth in the league preseason poll, captured the Big 12 Championship in storybook fashion — a 31-28 overtime victory against No. 3 TCU at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The Wildcats went on to play No. 5 Alabama in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, the program's first New Year's Day Bowl in a decade. K-State, 10-4, finished No. 14 in the AP Top 25 Poll, its highest ranking to end a season since 2014.
Some Power 5 schools would kill to have one top-revenue sport earn a league title. K-State could potentially have two its two biggest teams claim Big 12 trophies in 2022-23.
"You kind of pinch yourself, really," Taylor says. "Obviously, winning the Big 12 and knowing how hard a championship is at this level, and in this conference, watching us win and watching that celebration, and being in one of the biggest bowls in college football, and playing Alabama — and then rolling into basketball season, and the energy and excitement of our fans? You've got to pinch yourself and hold onto it as long as you can, because unfortunately, in this business, it doesn't last forever."
In the realm of the Power 5 conferences, there are few programs that currently have the joint success that the Wildcats are experiencing in football and men's basketball. As of Sunday, Tennessee and Alabama each owned a 29-5 record between football and men's hoops, Clemson, TCU and Georgia were each 29-7, and K-State and Purdue were 28-7, and UCLA was 26-8, followed by Texas and USC were at 26-9.
"I was hopeful we'd have a good football season in just talking to Chris and with what we had coming back," Taylor says. "I didn't necessarily expect the Big 12 Championship, but I thought we were going to have a pretty good year. Clearly the Big 12 Championship was the icing, the cherry on top — you name it, it was that.
"With Jerome, knowing what he was facing coming in with two returners sticking around and having to build that team, to say that I expected us to be sitting here, I didn't see that coming. I'm very happy for Jerome, the team, and us as a program. I felt that he would get it going. I felt it might take a while and that we'd probably be in a position where we might be playing for a chance to get into the NCAA Tournament, but the fact that we are sitting where we are right now is phenomenal."
Taylor rarely sat while he was growing up. The son of a high school basketball coach, Taylor busied himself inside of high school gyms for as long as he can remember. Taylor was born in Morenci, Arizona. His family eventually moved about two hours south to Willcox, a town that today has a population of 3,200 people, where he saw his father lead his teams to multiple state championships. Taylor rode with his father on the yellow school bus to high school games.
"I remember never getting a perfect attendance record because we always missed a day of school for the high school basketball championship," Taylor says.
Basketball was Taylor's first love. Although he excelled in football and baseball, Taylor was cut from his high school basketball team his senior year. That's when he assumed his first administrative role. His basketball coach asked him to serve as team manager — a role that Taylor also assumed for the men's basketball team when he attended Arizona State University.
Taylor was uncertain about an academic major, but he knew that he wanted to be involved in the business world. He believed hotel and restaurant management would be an ideal route. Arizona State didn't offer that exact major, but Taylor would benefit from the business and financial curriculum.
"Once I started, I just stayed with it," Taylor says. "I didn't want to get out of it."
However, it appeared that might change when an Arizona State associate athletic director asked Taylor, "Have you ever thought about getting into athletic administration?" Taylor served as his summer intern. Then things took another twist. Taylor decided to earn his master's degree in sports administration, but walked into his first class and said, "I'm done with school. I can't do this."
During this time, Taylor was also serving as a bartender and door host — "Basically, I was a bouncer," Taylor says — at a popular restaurant chain. His passion for the restaurant industry led him to become a manager for four years.
Then athletics entered the picture again.
"I said, 'I have to get out of this business and get back,'" Taylor says. "A friend of mine, who was an undergraduate student with me, had stayed in the athletic business while I went into the restaurant business. He worked in the ticket office at Arizona State, and moved to Washington State, and was living in Miami as the director of ticket operations. I asked him, 'How do I get back into the business?' He said, 'Come down here and get your master's and I'll get you a job.'"
Taylor, a 1980 business management graduate of Arizona State, earned his master's degree in sports administration from St. Thomas University in Florida in 1985.
Taylor served at SMU as a ticket office assistant (1985-86). He served as administrative assistant, assistant ticket manager, ticket manager, assistant AD for tickets/operations, and as an associate athletics director at the Naval Academy (1986-2001). His tenure at Navy included serving as commissioner of the five-team Collegiate Sprint Football League, comprised of Army, Navy, Penn, Princeton and Cornell.
He took over as athletics director at North Dakota State in 2001 and led the program through the reclassification to Division I from Division II and secured conference affiliations for all 16 sports. He became deputy athletics director at the University of Iowa in 2014, where he stayed until then-K-State President Richard Myers hired him to lead the Wildcats in April 2017.
"I really pretty much started at the ground floor as a manager in the equipment room at Arizona State and on the ground floor in the ticket office and business office," Taylor says. "Once you get to an AD job, you get a lot of perks and must remember that there are a lot of really great people who work a lot of hours to make sure you're successful.
"For me, it's about being good to people and to treat people fair and to be honest. My dad was always one of making sure that you're honest and do everything the right way. I always thought if you treat people the right way and work really hard then good things will come."
Today, Taylor is regarded as one of the top athletic directors in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Recently, K-State football has made four bowl appearances, men's basketball advanced to the 2018 Elite Eight and shared the 2019 Big 12 Championship, women's basketball went to two NCAA Tournaments, and women's track and field won back-to-back Big 12 Outdoor Championships.
Under Taylor, K-State has implemented a department-wide facility master plan that has benefitted the baseball and women's soccer programs in addition to Building Champions, a $126.5 million initiative focused on the south end zone of Bill Snyder Family Stadium, the new Morgan Family Volleyball Arena, an Olympic training center and the Shamrock Football Practice Facility. Overall pledges and cash gifts to the department during the 2022 fiscal year totaled a record $58.9 million, of which $20.4 million was designated for the Ahearn Fund annual giving program and surpassing its budgeted goal previous record of $18.9 million in fiscal year 2019. Included in the $20.4 million in annual giving was a department-record $801,000 raised during the Powercat Auction. The department also received $42.6 million in cash giving, marking only the third time in history it has eclipsed the $40 million mark.
Academically, football, men's golf, women's golf, tennis and volleyball programs all earned Big 12-leading graduation-rate figures, and K-State's all-sport graduation rate of 93% marked the highest in department history, as the NCAA released its latest graduation rate data in November.
"I tell our student-athletes all the time that for me, obviously, success on the field is important, clearly, and fans love it, and they love what coaches do, and athletes come here to be successful, but for me, when I can go to our donors and alums and talk about what they're doing outside of competition in terms of community service, academics, graduation rates, all those things, that tells me everybody that comes to work every day is doing it for the right reasons — to make sure our student-athletes have a great experience and have an opportunity to either continue their career within sports or earn a degree," Taylor says. "Coaches are taking the right approach. We have a great support staff in terms of academics and everything else to help these kids.
"I can't be more proud of how things operate around here because of the people we have coming to work every day."
But what are the odds, really? And what are those odds, that in this day in age in collegiate athletics, within a four-year span, an athletics director would hire a first-time FBS head football coach, and a first-time Division I head men's basketball coach, and reach such heights of success? That's what Taylor has done.
"It really comes down to the kind of people they are," Taylor says. "I knew Chris from North Dakota State, who he was, what he believed in, how he treated people, and the type of coach he was. I didn't know Jerome, but I knew people who did know him, and everybody said, 'He's just a tremendous guy.'
"Both Chris and Jerome are phenomenal individuals."
Taylor cannot pinpoint the exact first time that he met Klieman, but the two became better acquainted when Klieman, a North Dakota State defensive backs coach, was promoted to defensive coordinator in 2012. When NDSU head coach Craig Bohl announced his decision to leave the Bison, which he had steered to multiple FCS national titles, Taylor believed that Klieman could be a candidate to replace Bohl.
Bohl told Taylor that he was going to take the Wyoming head coach position after a 38-7 victory over Furman in a FCS second-round playoff game at the Fargodome in December 2013.
"Chris was one of the coaches I was interested in," Taylor says. "We had the playoff game on Friday night and Craig announced that he was leaving, and I talked to another candidate who wasn't interested, and Chris wanted to take a run at the job. The game was over at 10 p.m. and we made it to my house at around midnight. We went to my basement and talked until 3 a.m. or 3:30 a.m. Chris was so passionate about his plan. He said, 'Gene, what are your expectations for me as a first-year head coach if you offer me the job?' I said, 'Chris, I'll tell you two things. I'll tell you my expectations and the expectations of the fan base. We just won three national championships in a row. The team that won the last one finished 16-0 and there are 25 graduating seniors. My expectation is you build a team that gets us into the playoffs and makes a run. The fan base expectation is you win a national championship. If you can handle both of those, particularly the latter, you'll be successful here.'
"Sure enough, Chris took them to Frisco and won four titles out of five years. By that time I had moved onto Kansas State. But that told me Chris wasn't afraid of challenges and expectations and understanding how to take a program with success and put his own mark on it."
Klieman's success at NDSU, coupled by what Taylor knew of him, made Klieman a candidate for the K-State position in 2018.
"I knew Chris, right, and I felt pretty strongly that he could be the guy, but there were a lot of other candidates out there who were really good candidates," Taylor says. "I wanted to be sure we spoke with the best people available, and we spoke with some really good candidates. It came down to two or three guys who were all very similar in terms of success, how they interviewed, and all brought a little something different to the table. I remember we were sitting here on a Sunday night going through the candidates, and President Myers said, 'Gene, you're the AD. We have two really good candidates and a third one who's really good as well. It's your call.'
"Because I knew Chris, I said, 'You know what, based on what I know about this guy, I know he's going to be successful.' Obviously, we went with him. In my gut, I felt that at the end of the day he was going to rise to the top above all the other candidates."
Taylor pauses.
"And that's what he did."
Fast-forward to last March and Taylor knew he had a decision to make. K-State men's basketball had finished 10th, 10th and ninth in the Big 12 standings over the last three years. Fan enthusiasm was down. The program needed a reboot. Taylor struck gold with the energetic and charismatic Tang, who in 19 years as assistant coach and associate head coach under Scott Drew helped transform Baylor into a national powerhouse and capture the 2021 National Championship.
"I heard the name Jerome Tang and obviously did a little research because I saw him a couple times when Baylor played here," Taylor says. "I just remember his presence on the bench. He was really involved, like really involved. I had a friend of mine who worked at Baylor, and I called her and said, 'Tell me about Jerome Tang.' She said, 'You have to talk with him. He's unbelievable.' So we were in Kansas City and obviously had made the decision to move forward and find a new head coach, and Baylor was still playing. We brought in Jerome and he was the first guy we spoke with. He came in and his energy was through the roof and his personality was infectious. We were there for an hour. We talked with two or three guys in Kansas City, but when Jerome Tang left the room, I told our people, 'That guy just set the bar. If we find somebody who can get over that bar, we've got a really, really good candidate. If not, this guy is going to be really good for us.'
"Ultimately, he had us to his house and he blew us away in his house. When we talked basketball, some of the stuff he talked about, I was like, 'OK, this guy really gets it.' Who he was as a person? Wow. He had an immediate impact on me."
Tang had a vision for the K-State basketball culture.
"He talked in the interview about engaging the students and trying to get us back to the Octagon of Doom," Taylor says. "He said, 'I remember walking in as an opponent and we didn't want to play here at times.' He wanted to do everything he could to bring it back. The chant, he wanted more than anything for that to go away, because that wasn't him as a person and us as a program.
"He single-handedly so far has been able to change the narrative and that's been phenomenal."
As for Taylor's favorite memories so far during this 2022-23 year between football and men's basketball?
"For football, the Big 12 Championship game," Taylor says. "I was in my hotel room (as a member of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee). I just remember the elation. Those guys started out the season saying, 'Let's go win the Big 12.' It kind of started when we beat LSU (in the Texas Bowl). And we had such good individuals. You take Deuce Vaughn and Felix Anudike-Uzomah and Will Howard and Adrian Martinez and the ups and downs and how everyone stayed together, and who they are as individuals and as a team, that's really fun to see them have success.
"For basketball, I just remember we had five guys on the team, and I wondered how we could play a season with five guys. Tang just kept telling me, 'We're going to be fine, Gene, we're going to be fine. We're going to get into the NCAA Tournament.' I said, 'Alright.' Then another time I even asked Tang, 'Coach are you nervous? You have seven guys.' He said, "We're going to find the right dudes. We're not bringing just anybody here. We're going to find the right dudes. Trust me.'
"Then to see where it is today, it's phenomenal. I just sit back and enjoy every minute of it."
Usually with a box of popcorn.
The outlook is bright for both K-State football and men's basketball — and for K-State athletics as a whole. The football program returns a multitude of starters and has signed one of its best recruiting classes in the last 20 years. The basketball program continues to head toward the NCAA Tournament and remains one of the top stories this college basketball season. Couple that fundraising and facilities and graduation rates, and there's plenty for Taylor and his staff to be proud about in Manhattan.
As for whether K-State should be considered one of the league's top forces, as the Big 12 moves forward and unveils its new-look conference in 2023-24?
"I don't know how we can't be," Taylor says. "We had a visitor on campus, the president of West Virginia. President Richard Linton invited him on campus and he spoke to a couple groups and apparently President Linton took him on a little tour of our facilities and he was extremely impressed. When you look at our facilities that are going to be done here collectively in one location for the most part and are pretty brand new, when you look at the success that we've had, the type of community we have, and the types of coaches we have, I don't know how we can't be considered a force in the Big 12."
K-State Men's Basketball | Game Replay vs UL Monroe - December 28, 2025
Sunday, December 28
K-State Men's Basketball | Coach Tang Postgame Press Conference vs UL Monroe
Sunday, December 28
K-State Men's Basketball | Athletes Press Conference vs UL Monroe (PJ Haggerty & Nate Johnson)
Sunday, December 28
K-State Men's Basketball | Game Highlights vs UL Monroe
Sunday, December 28
