<table> </table> John Currie&#8217;s first day as Kansas State&#8217;s new athletic director isn&#8217;t until June 7. But after K-State officials revealed Wednesday what they called a &#8220;secret&#8221; financial agreement between former football coach Ron Prince and former A.D. Bob Krause, Currie might be tempted to gain a head start.</p><p>There&#8217;s a lot of work to do, and most of it is in the form of damage control.</p><p>The university filed suit Wednesday in Riley County District Court after discovering a deferred-compensation agreement between Krause and Prince that school officials say no one else knew about. The pact pays Prince $3.2 million from 2015 to 2020, in addition to the $1.2 million buyout provision in his employment contract.</p><p>Currie, who arrives from the University of Tennessee with a reputation as an outstanding fund-raiser, won&#8217;t be able to simply focus on his strengths. There will be more pressing matters.</p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the challenge, the selling job (incoming president) Kirk (Schulz) and John Currie have in front of them &#8212; doing everything to restore the integrity and trust of the university,&#8221; former K-State A.D. Max Urick said. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been encouraged by what I&#8217;ve seen, and I think they&#8217;re off to a good start.&#8221;</p><p>They presumably haven&#8217;t asked for any money yet.</p><p>The first time that happens, it&#8217;s bound to be a dicey proposition. How are prospective donors to know for certain if their donations are being distributed to the sport of their choice &#8212; and not to help subsidize the multimillion-dollar settlements given in the past 17 months to Prince ($4.4 million at the moment) and former athletic director Tim Weiser ($1.9 million)?</p><p>Currie isn&#8217;t sure.</p><p>&#8220;I really can&#8217;t talk about it yet because I don&#8217;t know what it is yet,&#8221; he said at Monday&#8217;s news conference announcing his hiring.</p><p>Suddenly, being an outsider &#8212; Currie and Schulz, the vice president for research and economic development at Mississippi State &#8212; isn&#8217;t a negative. Not having any ties to the university might be an advantage.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s disappointing,&#8221; said Garth Gardiner, a prominent K-State booster, of Wednesday&#8217;s events. &#8220;We hopefully have a person in place that understands what we need to do to go forward. He can move forward with a clean slate. One of our best attributes is that we dwell on the past. But we can&#8217;t change anything that happened.&#8221;</p><p>Which is essentially what Currie explained at his introductory news conference.</p><p>His platform is transparency, which explains why copies of his contract were readily available inside the Legends Room at Bramlage Coliseum.</p><p>&#8220;Why waste the time with the Freedom of Information Act requests?&#8221; Currie said. &#8220;You guys are trying to do your job, and we want to help you do your jobs. You&#8217;re a key conduit with our fans.&#8221;</p><p>No secrets, nothing to hide.</p><p>&#8220;An open book,&#8221; Currie said.</p><p>Which is fine, as long as there isn&#8217;t anything lurking in the inside flaps of the book&#8217;s dust jacket.</p><p>A source said Wednesday the new athletic director was aware of the Prince-Krause agreement &#8212; which Prince&#8217;s lawyer Neil Cornrich says is legally binding &#8212; and Currie obviously wasn&#8217;t deterred.</p><p>Surely he&#8217;s aware of the size of the chore ahead.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s monumental,&#8221; Urick said. &#8220;This won&#8217;t be rebuilt in a short amount of time. The trust, the faith.&#8221;</p><p><hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">FIT OVER A PRINCE </span></strong><br /> The deal between Bob Krause (left) and Ron Prince shocks K-State. <strong>| A1</strong></p><p></div>