Contact: Kenny Lannou, Director of Athletics Communications/SID
Phone: 785.532.7977
E-Mail: klannou@kstatesports.com

K-State Settles Lawsuit with Former Head Football Coach

MANHATTAN, Kan. - Kansas State University and K-State Athletics, Inc., have reached an agreement totaling $1.65 million to settle a lawsuit with former head football coach Ron Prince, University officials announced Friday.

The claim concerned the payment obligations called for in an August 2008 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by Prince and former Athletics Director Robert Krause.

The University filed suit in May 2009 claiming that the MOU was invalid and unenforceable. Prince countered by claiming that he was owed $3.2 million under the terms of the MOU. To resolve the dispute, and with neither party making any admission of liability, K-State Athletics will make a lump-sum payment of $1.65 million to Prince. K-State Athletics incurred a total of $395,000 in outside legal fees during this process.

"We are pleased to have this matter resolved," said President Kirk Schulz. "We appreciate the work that our University counsel has provided during this process and can now maintain focus on moving forward as a University community."

In keeping with the July 2009 K-State Pledge, Athletics Director John Currie emphasized that the settlement amount would be paid from conference and NCAA revenues and that no individual donations or ticket revenue would be used. The department will specifically earmark K-State's share of the withdrawal fees to be paid by Nebraska and Colorado to the Big 12 Conference toward fulfilling the settlement.

"Over the last 23 months the support and passion of Wildcat fans have helped K-State leap forward toward our vision of being a model intercollegiate athletics program," said Currie. "We are glad to close this chapter and focus our energies on building upon the terrific 2010-11 year Kansas State student-athletes have had both on the playing field and in the classroom, and are looking forward to even brighter days ahead as we move into an exciting time with the new Big 12 Conference."

Neither the University nor K-State Athletics contends or believes that in negotiating his employment agreement or the MOU, Coach Prince engaged in any wrongful or unethical conduct. Discovery has demonstrated that this situation was not of Coach Prince’s making.

The signed settlement agreement is available at http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/may11/athletics.pdf

– k-statesports.com –