UK began exploring changes to athletics org chart before Barnhart’s retirement
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- UK began exploring athletic org changes shortly after transitioning to Champions Blue.
- Deloitte was contracted in July 2025 and paid $2.77 million overall.
- UK chose not to use any of the four charts and later named the CEO of Champions Blue.
The process of restructuring Kentucky’s athletic department leadership team did not begin with the retirement decision of longtime athletic director Mitch Barnhart.
Those plans actually began shortly after UK transitioned management of its athletic department to a nonprofit LLC called Champions Blue last year, according to documents obtained by the Herald-Leader through the state’s open records law.
In July 2025, UK contracted Deloitte Consulting to perform a variety of tasks associated with the formation of Champions Blue. In addition to assisting in the transition of athletic department employees to the LLC, Deloitte was tasked with helping UK develop a job architecture for Champions Blue that could include altered titles, organizational charts and leveling guides.
“This analysis was done around the time of the launch of Champions Blue, so Deloitte was tasked with conducting analysis that would help this new board understand the landscape and how it was changing so rapidly,” Jay Blanton, UK’s vice president for university relations and chief communications officer, said in a statement to the Herald-Leader. “Indeed, in a landscape that is changing so much and so rapidly, it’s been critical that we are assessing everything. That includes what we do, how we do it and how we are organized.”
Among the results of that analysis were the four organizational charts presented to stakeholders interviewed by UK President Eli Capilouto on the listening tour that preceded formal interviews for a new athletic director.
While Capilouto used the suggestions to gain feedback as he prepared for the search to replace Barnhart, they were not only under consideration because Barnhart was set to retire June 30 after 24 years leading the department. Barnhart’s UK contract has included the ability to transition to an ambassador role for the university July 1, 2026, since 2023, but he had not yet decided to trigger that option when Deloitte began its Champions Blue work, according to the timeline Barnhart has laid out in previous interviews.
“Regardless of the leadership in place or whether it is changing, we need an organizational structure that best positions us to generate revenue, maximize expenses and adapt to changes,” Blanton said. “That analysis didn’t presuppose a change to organizational structure, but clearly, if you look across the country, most large and successful departments are analyzing the ways they do business and how they do it.”
Ultimately, UK chose not to use any of the four organizational charts — two of which would have created a dual-leadership model that featured two people leading the department. The school announced in May that Barnhart’s successor will carry the title of CEO of Champions Blue in addition to athletics director, emphasizing the need for the future leader to run the department more like a business.
According to multiple reports Saturday, Kentucky has focused its search for Barnhart’s replacement on Michigan State athletics director J Batt, a former AD at Georgia Tech and deputy athletic director at Alabama.
Barnhart declined through a spokesman to comment for this story, but at his retirement news conference in March said his decision to retire was a result of wanting to spend more time with his family and finding a new role after stepping away from the day-to-day management of the department, not a response to the professionalization of college sports.
When Barnhart went public with his retirement decision, UK announced he would be the executive in residence for the school’s new Sport and Workforce Initiative starting July 1. After Gov. Andy Beshear joined the group of vocal critics of that appointment and the $950,000 salary that would accompany a job whose responsibilities had not been defined, Barnhart announced in April he would no longer transition to that role when he retired as athletics director.
Deloite was paid $2.77 million for its consulting work with Champions Blue, according to the July 2025 contract and a November 2025 contract that expanded the initial work request by four weeks.
The consulting firm had previously worked with UK in transitioning hospitals in Ashland and Morehead into the Beyond Blue LLC corporation after their purchase by the university. Champions Blue is also housed within Beyond Blue, so Deloitte was tasked with providing additional assessments of the needs of Champions Blue from the Beyond Blue shared services of IT, procurement/purchasing, finance and human relations.
According to the November contract with Deloitte, it was the Champions Blue transition that inspired UK to “reimagine organizational efficiency and service delivery, particularly through the adoption of enterprise shared services.” That work culminated in the Integrate Blue initiative, which resulted in centralizing the marketing and communications, student success and IT departments across campus.
Asked about the Integrate Blue initiative at his retirement news conference, Barnhart deferred to the president’s office before issuing a vote of support to changes that could help the athletic department better respond to changes resulting from revenue sharing with athletes in college athletics.
“I do believe that it’s going to change,” Barnhart said. “We’ve got to be able to adapt. … How do we create new revenue streams for our program that allow us to have the infusion? We’re out of the normal five (revenue) buckets of tickets, fundraising, major contracts, multimedia agreements, your conference revenue sharing and those kinds of things. How do you do more than those normal five buckets?
“We’ve got to be creative, and the LLC gives us some of those opportunities. And so that’s important. Again, it goes back to what ends up supporting the ability for us to graduate our young people and compete like crazy. If we can find a way to spin the wheel a little faster from a revenue perspective, it gives us more opportunity to do that. I’m hoping the LLC is part of that. It’s just a reframing or restructuring of things. It doesn’t mean necessarily that we’ve changed our business completely. We’re trying to add things to the model, I think would probably a better way of looking at it.”