Kentucky athletics director Barnhart signs contract extension, receives pay raise
Mitch Barnhart is in his 20th year as athletics director at the University of Kentucky. He just signed up for more, along with a raise in pay.
Barnhart signed a contract extension with the Wildcats through the 2025-26 school year on Sept. 2. The school’s Office of Legal Counsel revealed the new deal Friday, as first reported by the Courier Journal of Louisville.
Barnhart is scheduled to earn $1.2 million in 2022-23, $1.275 million in 2023-24, $1.35 million in 2024-25, and 1.425 million in 2025-26.
The contract announced Friday represents Barnhart’s first extension since the one he signed in 2018. That contract opened at $925,000 per year and was to end at $1.175 million in 2022-23.
Kentucky is coming off a 2020-21 school year in which the university won national championships in volleyball and rifle amid a trying campaign in which college sports battled the COVID-19 pandemic and a resulting drop in athletics revenues. Kentucky’s overall sports programs finished 12th in the 2020-21 Learfield IMG College Directors’ Cup standings, the school’s third-best performance ever.
This year, UK’s football program was enjoying one of its best starts ever entering Saturday night’s game at Mississippi State. Its volleyball and men’s soccer teams are both ranked among the nation’s top 10, and its men’s and women’s basketball programs are ranked in the 2021-22 national preseason polls.
Barnhart, 62, recently completed a term as chair of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee, which selects teams for the NCAA Tournament each year. He is now part of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee.
Barnhart’s new contract extension, like the one he signed in 2018, includes several additional ways to earn money on top of his base salary.
Retention bonuses include $350,000 if Barnhart stays through 2024 and then another $400,000 in 2025 and $450,000 in 2026.
Kentucky hired Barnhart, a native of Kansas City, Kan., as UK’s 10th athletics director in 2002, replacing Larry Ivy. Barnhart previously served as athletics director at Oregon State from 1998-2002.
The contract extension signed in September also includes updated incentive bonuses for UK teams’ academic performance.
The new contract deleted two previous incentives Barnhart could have received, one for the school’s NCAA Academic Progress Rate and the other for UK’s performance in the Directors’ Cup.
“In the most challenging year in our memory, and perhaps the most challenging year in collegiate athletics history, our teams, athletes, coaches and staff persevered with much success,” Barnhart said after the school’s 12th-place Directors’ Cup finish last school year. “We will celebrate this success, and also use it for motivation as we look ahead to the coming year in our pursuit of being among the elite athletics departments in the nation.”