The Mercury set out to answer two questions that remained unclear since the start of this academic year: First, why did Nae’Qwan Tomlin get kicked off the basketball team when the only incident we knew of involved an arrest for a municipal code violation that ended with a diversion?
Second, how had that incident affected the working relationship between three of the highest-profile, top-paid public employees in the state: Jerome Tang, Gene Taylor and Richard Linton?
We conducted dozens of interviews with multiple sources close to the situation. Many of those sources did not want to be named or would not speak on the record. We were unable to reach either Tomlin after he left town, or his agent.
We requested records related to any Title IX investigation of Tomlin, which K-State denied. We requested any records related to any similar investigation of any member of the basketball team, which was also denied. We searched police and court records. We requested any and all public records of communication between Tang, Taylor and Linton — and had to pay $590 for K-State to produce them. That process took weeks, as K-State lawyers gathered, reviewed and redacted e-mails and texts.
We then re-interviewed some of the parties, and eventually were given an extended interview March 8 with Linton, who spoke for about an hour and a half on a variety of subjects. As did the others, he said he could not talk about any earlier incident involving Tomlin.
We allowed university and athletics officials to look over a draft of the story so as to make sure we didn’t misrepresent facts. We published as soon as we went over changes and gathered answers to follow-up questions.
— Ned Seaton
