Barnhart gets a golden parachute with nearly $1 million salary in new job | Opinion
Editor’s note: Six hours after this story was published, UK spokesman Jay Blanton contacted the Herald-Leader to say that he had made a mistake in the source of retiring Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart new salary. The $950,000 salary will be paid out of athletics, not the university’s general fund. Blanton apologized for the error.
Say what you will, the University of Kentucky has great timing.
On March 2, President Eli Capilouto sent out a campus-wide message warning about budget cuts from the General Assembly. The very next day, UK announced that Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart would be retiring, but get a new gig that pays him almost $1 million a year to be part of something called the UK Sport and Workforce Initiative.
What is this, you ask? Great question. The program was announced at the same time as Barnhart’s retirement, strangely a week before the SEC men’s basketball tournament starts. It has no presence to speak of on UK’s website.
Ah, to be an overpaid sports figure who isn’t quite enthusiastic enough about a sports branding company being in charge of college athletics. According to the contract amendment, Barnhart will be paid $950,000 a year to do some things that are soon to be decided.
I’m kidding, of course. According to his contract amendment, Barnhart will be “Executive in Residence” for the UK Sport and Workforce Initiative, “a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach to the study and promotion of sports.”
UK spokesman Jay Blanton said the initiative is being developed by Capilouto, who will unveil it in the coming weeks.
“Its purpose is to better align the university with workforce needs across Kentucky and to strengthen students’ career readiness,” Blanton said in an email. “Sports is one early focus, but it is only one part of a broader effort. The initiative is university-funded and reflects how we are orienting teaching, learning, and experiential opportunities more intentionally around careers that are growing in the state.”
Blanton said sports offers growth potential “with expanding career opportunities in areas such as digital marketing, law, finance, philanthropy, and health.”
Barnhart’s specific duties as executive in residence will include “helping coordinate internships, speakers, philanthropic opportunities, and industry engagement,” Blanton said. “An academic leader will oversee curricular alignment so students can more easily navigate existing offerings across colleges.”
As an academic employee, Barnhart will lose some of his perks, like most of the incentives for winning games, etc., his two cars, and supplemental life insurance.
But he gets a $650,000 “retention bonus,” upped from $450,000 in the most recent contract addendum, and he gets to keep his university-paid country club membership and all benefits. He also gets 10 tickets to every home football, basketball or baseball game through he and his wife’s lifetime.
It’s a great gig if you can get it, right?
Should taxpayers pay this salary?
UK previously shared that the nearly $1 million salary would not come from Champions Blue, the limited liability company that now runs athletics, or JMI, the sports branding company that also now runs athletics, or anything associated with the excesses of what used to be a college athletics endeavor. The university indicated Barnhart’s salary would come out of the university’s general fund, which keeps shrinking.
UK later clarified that Barnhart’s salary will come from the athletics budget, not the general fund.
This situation is strangely similar to the current job of former head of UK HealthCare Mark Newman, who merged to a $1 million job as university advisor for health care innovation and growth so that Robert DiPaola, the former head of the College of Medicine and VP of Everything Eric Monday could take over UK’s health care. Since that time, DiPaola has become the provost, while Monday completes UK’s transformation into an LLC that pays the 1% exorbitant salaries while warning everyone else about hard times ahead.
Monday is also heavily involved in UK Athletics, as judged from his leadership role in Champions Blue, and is rumored to be in line to become the next president.
But I digress.
Why can’t Barnhart just retire? God knows he’s made millions of dollars in 24 years here doing by all accounts a pretty good job. Then again, who among us would turn down a $1 million golden parachute?
There are bigger problems at play. If I were a legislator trying to get the state’s budget under control, I’d look more closely at what’s going on over in UK’s administrative offices rather than encouraging DEI bounty hunters, who terrorize staff members over whether they once said the words “woman,” or “inclusive.”
Because despite budget cuts, despite the looming Medicaid cliff that will surely hurt the golden goose known as UK HealthCare, it’s very strange how there’s always enough money to pay people to get out of the way.
This story was originally published March 4, 2026 at 11:57 AM.
