Why Kentucky athletics director J Batt uses only one letter in his first name
Whether Kentucky hired the athletics director best equipped to lead the department in an ever-changing era for college sports will take some time to evaluate.
But in hiring former Georgia Tech and Michigan State athletics director J Batt, the school certainly hired the candidate best suited for the social media character limits era.
Born Jason Michael Batt on Dec. 30, 1981, in Urbana, Illinois, the new UK athletics director and CEO of Champions Blue LLC began going by Jay in elementary school when there were three Jasons in his class. He used the three-letter spelling through at least college, when he was listed as Jay Batt on the North Carolina men’s soccer roster across four seasons from 2000 to 2003.
Batt was named to the ACC Honor Roll each year at North Carolina and received one of the ACC Top Six Awards for Service in 2003 in recognition for his community service work off the field.
By 2007, when Batt was hired as director of major gifts for athletics at James Madison University, he had dropped to just one letter in his first name.
“It started in third grade, three Jasons,” Batt told the Herald-Leader on Monday. “We went to J somewhere in there, in a media guide somewhere. We went to J, and it stuck.”
Now more than 20 years into his administration career, it is difficult to find any reference to Batt as anything but J online.
But what does his mother think of the impromptu name change?
“She just yells at me, Jason, when I’m in trouble,” Batt said with a laugh. “So we go with that.”