Mitch Barnhart steps away from proposed job at UK amid growing criticism
Two days after Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear joined the growing number of people criticizing the new university job created for UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart, UK has announced Barnhart will no longer take that job.
Barnhart was set to move from athletic director to a role as executive of a new UK Sport and Workforce Initiative on July 1. The job would have paid him $950,000 per year, but UK provided few specifics about what Barnhart’s responsibilities would be. President Eli Capilouto announced Thursday Barnhart was going to “step away” from that proposed role.
“Mitch Barnhart came to me earlier this week to share his concern that the discussion surrounding his future role leading our sports workforce initiative has become a distraction from the work of our university,” Capilouto said in a statement. “Mitch and his family care deeply about this institution and our state, and they want the focus to return to the work that matters most for our students and the Commonwealth.”
Barnhart previously dismissed the concerns being raised about his new job.
“This notion that this golden parachute is falling from the ceiling, and I’m going to sit in a rocking chair and eat hay is ridiculous garbage,” Barnhart said at his retirement news conference in March. “That notion that (was) started by some, a couple, two or three knuckleheads, needs to end. I’m excited about working. I’m not done.”
But he acknowledged specifics on his new job weren’t clear.
“In a nutshell, I have some sense of where we’re going to go and how we’re going to do it,” he said. “But building, sometimes you get into it and you figure out how to build after that and you go. And I’m going to do that.”
UK announced March 3 that Barnhart was retiring as athletic director at the end of June after 24 years in the position. His 2023 contract extension allowed him to transition to a university administration role as special assistant to the president on that date, but the school updated his contract to reflect the creation of the executive residence position.
That contract amendment set his new salary at $950,000, up from the $800,000 per year he would have received in the original special assistant position. Barnhart would also be paid a $650,000 retention bonus on June 30, 2026, and receive 10 tickets to each football, men’s basketball and baseball game through his and his wife’s lifetime.
The school announced Barnhart’s role before it had provided any specifics about what the workforce initiative would look like, though. UK also denied a Herald-Leader open records request for documents concerning Barnhart’s new position and retirement, claiming some of the documents fell under attorney-client privilege and others were preliminary in nature or constituted an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
Initially, a UK spokesman said Barnhart’s $950,000 salary for the position would be paid by the academic side of the university, but, amid fierce criticism of that setup, later said the information provided had been incorrect, and the athletic department would continue to pay Barnhart, even though he was no longer working with the school sports teams.
Criticism remained, with prominent UK athletics booster Brett Setzer leading the charge to reverse the decision.
Beshear added his voice to the discussion with a statement Tuesday saying he was “losing confidence and growing increasingly concerned with the management and decision-making.” He pointed to Barnhart’s new job and the appointment of federal judge Gregory Van Tatenhove as the new dean of UK’s law school as his reasons for concern.
UK’s response to Beshear’s statement defended Van Tatenhove’s appointment but did not mention Barnhart’s job.
“With our family previously having made the decision to retire in June from the position of athletics director, we were very excited about beginning the workforce initiative, developing a new program and pouring into the next generation of leaders in sports,” Barnhart said in a statement. “Work has already begun on the initiative, but recently it has become apparent that now is not the right time and we would never stand in the way of what we deem best. The world of sports is dynamic and ever-changing. It is my hope that this initiative will continue in the future.”
In his statement, Capilouto said he would work with Barnhart to finalize the terms of his departure “through a process guided by his contract.”
The contract amendment signed by Capilouto and Barnhart in March specifies Barnhart would be paid his monthly athletic director salary through June 2028, as well as two $650,000 retention bonuses set for the next two years, if the university terminated his contract without cause before July 1. Those payments would total $4.55 million, but it is not immediately clear if the buyout applies since Barnhart stepped away from his new position.
“The compensation associated with his departure will be supported entirely by private funds — not athletic funds, not funds that would go toward NIL opportunities or university funds — that I will raise,” Capilouto said. “Mitch’s impact on this university has been profound, and I am grateful for his decades of leadership and service.”
This is a developing story that could be updated.
This story was originally published April 23, 2026 at 1:09 PM.