The situation with Ron Prince and K-State is getting worse and worse for the university. Austin Meek of the Topeka Capital Journal issued a report last week that one of the lawyers who repped K-State in contract negotiations with Prince "removed key safeguards" in the contract.
Those safeguards, which lawyer Jacque Butler now says were done hurriedly, allowed for the creation of the memorandum of understanding, which is the heart of the legal battle between K-State and Prince.
"I was directed to make specific changes and I just didn't consider what those were," Butler said during a May 12 deposition obtained by The Topeka Capital-Journal.
You read the full report from Meek which goes on to suggest that K-State's case is getting weaker and weaker but here's one part I haven't seen a lot of folks pick up on.
Krause, as the athletic director at the time, was by many accounts under his authority to negotiate that contract. Other than the fact that he was, you know, the athletic director responsible for hiring the coach, K-State bylaws appear to indicate that Krause had the authority to negotiate the deal.
Here's the relevant portion of the K-State bylaws: "The President and CEO of the Corporation is authorized to enter into any contract or execute and deliver any instrument in the name of and on behalf of the Corporation."
My nifty legal translator spit this out: "We pay this guy a lot of money so we'll let him negotiate contracts."
After this Prince mess transpired, K-State went back and, with the help of some nifty legal language that confuses the hell out of reporters just like me, tweaked the language to indicate that the AD (Krause) would need an additional signature from a top university official to negotiate a contract like Prince's.
The language I quoted above seemingly indicating Krause's authority to negotiate contracts on behalf of the school does not appear in the new bylaws.
That K-State went back and switched the language to protect themselves would imply that there was something wrong with the original language.
Like maybe the original language said the AD could act on his own authority and negotiate a contract with, say, the head coach.
If you want a simple explanation of what I feel has transpired, here it is: Prince's reps negotiated a hell of a deal, K-State knows it, and now they want out.
Time will tell who's right on this one.