Mayhem in Manhattan: KSU anger over secret football deal

May 26, 8:27 PMCollege Sports ExaminerJacob Osterhout

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There will be no more handshakes for Prince at KSU.

All is not well in Manhattan, Kansas.

The Little Apple is reeling from a recently uncovered secret deal between former Kansas State AD Bob Krause and former KSU football coach Ron Prince.

In the deal, which was accidentally discovered by university lawyers, Kansas State agrees to pay Prince $3.2 million starting in 2015. That's on top of the $1.2 million buyout the university already gave Prince upon his dismissal last November.

The deal was known by nobody at the university other than Krause and Prince - who finished with a 17-20 record and is now an assistant coach at Virginia - and has so rattled the administration that Kansas State president Jon Wefald actually cried in front of the state Board of Regents on Wednesday.

The university first tried to talk Prince out of the deal, but that predictably didn't work out very well. So now KSU has filed a lawsuit seeking to void the agreement on the grounds that the IPP Prince established didn't exist when the sweetheart deal was signed.

Regardless of the outcome, the damage has already been done. According to an AP report, Kansas State donors are thinking about withholding their contributions, even now that legendary Wildcat football coach Bill Snyder has been hired to replace Prince and restore the program's respectability. Apparently, bringing a 69-year-old out of retirement isn't exactly comforting for KSU fans, even if that 69-year-old is the man who once raised the football program to national prominence. Season ticket sales are down for the fifth straight year (at the stadium named after Snyder) and Snyder's recruiting class is rated the worst in the Big 12.

What adds even more intrigue to the story is that Krause worked with Wefald for thirty years, and was considered a close friend and confidant of the university president. In effect, he pulled a Brutus and stabbed his long time friend in the back. Now why would Krause do that?

Speculation is that Krause was going to benefit financially from the deal, but that does not really make sense considering that his father-in-law is Jack Vanier, one of the richest men in Kansas and a huge donor to KSU.

But that secret deal is only the beginning of KSU's financial issues. A $70 million expansion of athletic facilities has stalled for lack of funds and sources say that the athletic department budget has no financial reserves and their budget is in the red. This could be because Krause threw money around like Pacman Jones at a strip club.

Krause gave former Kansas State AD Tim Weiser a consulting agreement with the university worth $1.9 million over five years. He then went and signed basketball coach Frank Martin to a five-year contract worth $760,000 annually. And, to top it all off, Krause signed Dalonte Hill to a 400K a year deal that made him the highest-paid assistant in the country.

Granted, Krause did not act alone in any of those transactions as the university gave approval, at least tacitly, but it sure seems like Krause, and by extension Wefald, will be taking the fall for Kansas State football's bleak future.