How Kansas State’s Gene Taylor became one of the nation’s best athletic directors

Gene Taylor has spent the past 39 years working with different athletic departments all across the country. And during that time he has never felt like a celebrity in any of the college towns he has called home.

Until now.

“It’s been kind of funny,” Taylor said. “There have been a lot more people that want to come up and congratulate me or just say, ‘Hey, great job,’ than I have ever experienced before.”

Athletic directors like to say it’s their job to be “tolerated” but never “celebrated.” For example: A great college football player can become a living legend on his campus. An excellent college basketball coach can call out plays on a court that has been named in his honor. But much less praise is heaped upon the AD.

Even the best ones are considered sidekicks rather than heroes.

That much is certainly true at K-State, where most of the athletic directors that came before Taylor are remembered more for what they got wrong than what they got right.

Even Taylor felt vilified when he hired Chris Klieman to replace Bill Snyder and fans initially expressed outrage. But now that Klieman has proven himself as a winner and new basketball coach Jerome Tang has done the same, there is nothing to be upset about. Throw in the fact that fans are also watching games from state-of-the-art facilities that were built on Taylor’s watch and the athletic director is suddenly Big Man on Campus.

“You’ve got to be careful with that, because this can be short lived,” Taylor said. “But the thing I love about Kansas State is the pride our fans have. So when you have a year like we just had it means so much to them. They really appreciate having good coaches who do it the right way.”

A year to remember

It’s not just K-State fans who have shown their appreciation for Taylor. Several outlets named him the nation’s best athletic director earlier this year.

He was a deserving choice with K-State coming off one of its best athletic years in school history. The football team won 10 games and claimed a Big 12 championship. The men’s basketball team won 26 games and reached the Elite Eight. And both things happened with a pair of coaches who are only in Manhattan because Taylor had the guts to hire them.

Before Klieman arrived in Manhattan he was toiling away in relative obscurity at North Dakota State. Even though he won big while there, most athletic directors ignored him because he worked for an FCS team. Taylor, who had a history with Klieman at NDSU, looked past that and gave him his big break.

Tang spent nearly two decades as an assistant coach at Baylor before Taylor gave him a shot in the lead chair. Some questioned if a man without any head coaching experience at the college level could win at K-State. But Taylor thought he was a rock star.

Taylor saw something in both of them that few others could. Then he gave them everything they needed to win.

“He is the true coaches’ AD,” K-State baseball coach Pete Hughes said. “He is making decisions that are best for his coaches and his athletes. He’s not making any decisions based on Twitter or message boards or donor pressure. He is an absolute rarity these days at the Power Five level. He puts all that other stuff to the side and focuses on what is truly important. We want to win for Gene because of how he treats us and our program.”

Hughes says that after previously coaching at Boston College, Oklahoma and Virginia Tech.

“I’m telling you, this is the absolute best place I have ever been, and it’s because of him,” Hughes said. “The guy is different. He’s special.”

Starting at the bottom

Question is: How did Taylor become such a good AD after also being overlooked for jobs throughout most of his career?

Before he took over at K-State in 2017 he bounced around from SMU to Navy to North Dakota State and then to Iowa. And he was only an athletic director at one of those schools — NDSU. He took a step down to deputy AD with the Hawkeyes in hopes of getting a better job down the road.

It was a slow climb, but he is thankful for it. Taylor likes to think he has a unique perspective on college athletics because (cue Drake) he started at the bottom ... and now he’s here.

Taylor played baseball, basketball and football when he was growing up in the small mining community of Safford, Arizona, but he wasn’t good enough to play as a high school senior and he never got any looks as a college athlete.

Instead, he enrolled at Arizona State and joined the athletic department as a student manager.

A glorious job it was not. But it allowed him to learn about college sports on the ground floor and realize that every job in an athletic department, no matter how big or small, was important.

“That’s really where I learned a lot about coaching from a different viewpoint and what athletes go through on a daily basis,” Taylor said. “I got close with them, was in the locker room with them and learned what frustrates them and the pressure they they deal with. It’s not easy sometimes. That experience helped me a lot.”

Taylor got his start in the business as a ticket office assistant at SMU. Then he handled many jobs for 15 years at Navy, where he rose all the way up to associate AD. From there, he left for North Dakota State and helped the Bison became one of the preeminent powers in FCS football for 13 years.

He could have stayed at Fargo until he retired, but he yearned for a bigger and better opportunity elsewhere. Problem was, he kept getting turned down for every job he wanted. Apparently, there was a negative stigma going around about FCS athletic directors, too.

That’s why he decided to bet on himself when Gary Barta offered him the role of deputy AD at Iowa. Maybe it would open new doors for his career.

Sure enough, he caught on at K-State a few years later and pushed the athletic department to where it is today. But he never forgot his humble beginnings. That much is clear to his coaches.

When Klieman’s name was mentioned for other jobs last year, he told fans not to worry about him leaving K-State in part because of his relationship with Taylor.

“He knows the right buttons to push,” Klieman said. “He isn’t afraid to put his arm around me when things aren’t going well and pick me up. It doesn’t even have to be after a loss. When Skylar Thompson hurt his knee, I was crushed. He came up and told me, ‘This is why you’re good at what you do. You care so much about that kid.’ Stuff like that is what makes him so great.”

Tang agrees.

“He doesn’t micromanage and he doesn’t panic,” Tang said. “He always has my back. You can’t ask for anything more than that.”

What’s next?

Another interesting part of Taylor’s journey is what comes next.

His job requirements have changed drastically since he first arrived in Manhattan six years ago. Back then, his No. 1 priority by far was figuring out a retirement plan for Snyder and hiring his successor. It was one of the most important transitions in the history of K-State sports. But that test is now behind him, and he appears to have aced it.

There was also the question of what to do with former basketball coach Bruce Weber and his up-and-down record. Funds needed to be raised in order to build new facilities. K-State also needed to help re-fortify the Big 12 after Oklahoma and Texas left.

All of that is done, too. So what is he focusing on now?

“It’s really more about just maintaining momentum now,” Taylor said. “We need to find ways to keep ourselves competitive, not necessarily on the field, but with revenues and retaining coaches and finding dollars to make sure we can support our student athletes.”

Taylor says he is ready for an encore season, and many more. It’s possible a bigger school could try to lure him away at some point, but he has no plans to leave K-State. After all, they treat him like a celebrity here.

“There were a lot of people talking about me when Gary retired at Iowa, but no,” Taylor said. “My wife is very happy, my family is very happy. I am very happy. We all love Manhattan. I’m not ready to leave or retire. I still feel like I have got a lot in the tank. So we’re going to keep this going.”