Could UK look to pro sports or private sector for Mitch Barnhart’s replacement?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky prioritizes business-minded leadership in post-Barnhart era.
- Search may consider internal picks, sitting ADs or even private sector candidates.
- Next AD must grow commercialization while avoiding neglect of non-revenue sports.
There were buzzwords aplenty in UK president Eli Capilouto’s first video update of the school’s search for Mitch Barnhart’s replacement.
Greater efficiency, culture of integrity and centralizing functions are all jargon that pop up repeatedly in university announcements. Even though Barnhart is stepping down as Kentucky athletic director after 24 years in the job, his favorite slogan — “championship rings on fingers and diplomas in hands” — still made it into Capilouto’s update.
But if you were not lulled to sleep by the bureaucratese, there might also have been a hint at the type of candidate Kentucky ultimately might hire as its next athletic director.
“As the landscape of college athletics evolves, we must approach the future with thoughtful, business-minded decision making,” Capilouto said. “Expenses can’t continue to outpace revenues. Now we have to be even more entrepreneurial and intentional in paying our way.”
Last summer, Kentucky shifted management of its athletic department into a nonprofit LLC called Champions Blue in part to streamline the process needed to create new revenue streams. With the help of a $110 million internal loan from the university, the athletic department has begun the design process on multiple projects, including the addition of new luxury seating areas at Kroger Field and construction of fan entertainment districts around the football stadium and Memorial Coliseum.
While Champions Blue board members Eric Monday and Rob Edwards — each of whom holds an administrative role for the university — promoted the financial health of the department because of the move to an LLC in an interview with The Athletic this week, Capilouto’s message suggests that Barnhart’s successor will need to push even further in running the department more like a business.
“It is widely understood at this point that expenses are growing at a rate far faster than revenues are growing,” Sam Renaut, a college sports consultant for Deloitte, told the Champions Blue board in a January presentation. “Hence the need for a total redesign of how we capture business and commercialize the opportunities we have in front of us.”
Early speculation about potential Barnhart replacements centered on the vast network of former Barnhart lieutenants now running their own athletic departments and at least one internal candidate for the promotion.
But if Capilouto is stressing the need to push even further in the process of turning UK Athletics into a business, would it make sense for the school to hire someone already working in the private sector or professional sports?
“If you can bring somebody in that has some really good marketing development, innovation around the professional model, that’s a good thing,” Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier, the president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, told the Herald-Leader. “But they need to know their role, because they’re still going to learn a lot about higher ed in the process of survival when it comes to understanding a public or private institution’s operations.
“At the end of the day, you know and I know if I really wanted to run it like a pro, I would only have one sport. I wouldn’t have 17. I wouldn’t have 23. I would only have one sport. And if I try to neglect those other sports in the model, you know and I know this is going to be a potential issue or challenge or liability when you dismiss that.”
Of the 35 current athletic directors in the SEC, Big 10 and Notre Dame, all but two were already college sports administrators when hired. The exceptions are Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, the former chairman of NBC Sports, and Maryland athletic director James Smith, who was previously vice president of business for the Atlanta Braves.
Seven of those athletic directors were promoted from within the department. Five were athletic directors at Group of Five conference programs, and 17 were athletic directors at other power-conference programs. Four were deputy athletic directors at another program when hired.
“I always caution presidents and ADs and chancellors and all leadership that we got to take the best practices that we’ve learned historically and meld them with the modern rules and things that are changed, so you can deal with the now,” Frazier said. “So the old, the new and the now really needs to be the way you can manage the college athletic landscape, and be very careful about throwing out, ‘OK, we don’t do that anymore,’ because a lot of that’s still embedded.
“...Yeah, we do have football, we do have men’s and women’s basketball, but we also have other sports that need that TLC. And if you don’t get it, if you don’t do that, you might find yourself unemployed quickly because you’ve let your guard down.”
Among the documents Capilouto is asking people to read before he interviews them on a listening tour as part of the AD search are slides from Renaut’s presentation. The homework also includes the competing arguments from the SEC/Big 10 and University of Louisville about the potential pooling of media rights across college sports.
In the video update, Capilouto said he has already met with more than 30 people, including several in UK Athletics, as part of that listening tour.
UK has not granted the Herald-Leader’s request to interview Capilouto about the athletic director search, but in an appearance on WLXG, the Lexington ESPN Radio affiliate, he did not rule out the possibility of promoting from within to replace Barnhart.
Since Kentucky is not alone in making significant changes to its athletic department in the wake of revenue sharing with athletes, conference expansion, free transfers and NIL endorsements, Kentucky could also hire another sitting athletic director it views as capable of pushing forward with its business-first approach.
But the possibility of a nontraditional hire cannot be dismissed.
“We must have a structure that supports more revenue generation through greater commercialization,” Capilouto said in his update video. “At the same time, we must even more aggressively manage expenses. To that end, there are models to learn from in pro sports, the business world and beyond.”
Whether Kentucky looks inside or outside the world of college sports for Barnhart’s replacement, it is clear the job is different than it was for most of Barnhart’s tenure.
Where once he focused 75% of his time on competition and 25% of his time on business, that distribution has flipped, Barnhart said at his retirement news conference. After Barnhart announced his retirement, former UK football star and current Champions Blue board member Jacob Tamme recounted the story of calling Barnhart as a high school senior during the school’s 2002 football coaching search to express his interest in playing for Kentucky, but Barnhart told the Herald-Leader in December the ability to meet with recruits is one part of his job that has been decreased significantly in recent years.
“Mitch did a great job with setting that whole situation,” Frazier said. “So, whoever walks up in there, they’re not going to have to knock down those trees that maybe other places are saying, ‘Oh, don’t even come here, because we’re not ready for that.’
“It’s clear that this president is looking for somebody that can continue on and get ready to be competitive. Just like I listened to your basketball coach (Mark Pope), and he’s right: Expectations at Kentucky are what they are, and if you don’t meet them, you’re not going to be in that seat very long.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2026 at 6:45 AM.