New Kentucky AD J Batt on football-basketball debate, general managers and more
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- J Batt plans to listen, ask questions and evaluate as he prepares to take over in July.
- Batt said basketball sets the championship standard and football drives revenue.
- Batt said he will work with coaches to determine whether to use general managers.
New Kentucky athletics director J Batt surely already has bold ideas to push the Wildcats sports programs forward.
But his planned first step as he prepares to take over the reins of the department from Mitch Barnhart in July is much less flashy.
“The most important thing to do in a transition like this is to listen,” Batt said. “So, I’ll ask a lot of questions, I’ll listen, and we’ll evaluate.”
As part of a series of media appearances shortly after being named UK’s 11th athletics director and the new CEO of Champions Blue LLC, Batt spoke with the Herald-Leader in a one-on-one interview.
Here are three takeaways from that discussion.
Kentucky may be a basketball school, but football is key moving forward
One of the messier moments in Barnhart’s final years at UK was the public fight between men’s basketball coach John Calipari and football coach Mark Stoops about how department resources should be allocated.
Barnhart publicly chastised both coaches but appeared to take Stoops’ side in the debate, which Calipari had started by calling Kentucky a “basketball school.” Throughout his tenure, Barnhart was consistent in pushing back against the long-standing belief among some Kentucky fans that the investment in basketball was hurting UK’s chances of fielding a nationally competitive football program.
Batt struck a similar tone Monday.
“Listen, it’s undeniable that Kentucky men’s basketball has set that championship standard here,” Batt said. “The championships, the way it’s which it’s gone about winning and delivering consistent results over time, it has set the standard, but to your point, football is really, really important to the ultimate revenue-driving that we are going to do here, and that we will do to protect and to help all of our other sports achieve.”
Barnhart made it clear when he decided to pay $37.7 million to fire Mark Stoops in December that success in football is no longer optional in an era where the sport is driving national discussions of conference expansion and broadcast deals.
Batt hit on that same theme in firing football coach Jonathan Smith at Michigan State the same weekend.
New UK football coach Will Stein should feel confident his new boss has the same level of commitment in helping the football program succeed as his old one.
The general manager debate goes on
One of the first hires Stein made at UK was bringing Pat Biondo from Oregon to be his general manager. Biondo is tasked with handling most of the negotiations over NIL and revenue sharing deals with players and their agents.
That position appears to have been key in Stein’s early recruiting success, both in the transfer portal and high school ranks.
But men’s basketball coach Mark Pope has declined to hire a general manager despite increasing pushes from fans and pundits to do so. In May, Pope said his program was instead operating with a four-person general management team that includes director of roster management Keegan Brown, director of men’s basketball operations Nick Robinson, senior associate athletic director for athletic compliance Kevin Sergent and JMI sports senior vice president of NIL strategy Kim Shelton.
Asked for his opinion on the importance of general managers on staff in the new era of college sports, Batt preached flexibility.
“Everybody has different strengths on their staff,” he said. “What you call them, or how they operate, that all kind of works within each program with each coach. I’ll sit down with all of them and figure out the right setup. I’ve certainly worked with some sports with (GMs), some sports without them.
“I think the important part is that that student athlete piece is going to continue to evolve. And it’s an important part. We’ve got to go and work to acquire and retain the very best talent and student athletes, and so I’ll work with our coaches, figure out what’s important to them and how we provide them the best support.”
Batt a ‘hopeless romantic’
The importance UK placed on revenue-generation in the search process for Mitch Barnhart’s successor led to obvious questions about the impact a more businesslike approach for the department might have on sports other than men’s basketball and football.
Barnhart promised to not cut sports or staff after the NCAA’s House settlement created an additional $20.5 million expense from revenue sharing with athletes, but other schools have already moved to cut nonrevenue teams in an effort to control expenses. Batt, a former college soccer goalie, did not cut sports at either of his previous athletics director stops, but he did oversee a dramatic cut in the size of the Georgia Tech swimming and diving roster after the House settlement last year.
“I’m a hopeless college athletics romantic,” Batt said. “I think our ultimate goal is to protect the opportunity mission of college athletics, which means you’re going to provide opportunities for young people to come to a university, to come to the University of Kentucky, and change their life.”
Batt’s Michigan State tenure was so short that there is not much publicly available information about how he will invest in nonrevenue sports in the wake of revenue sharing. He signed longtime Michigan State baseball coach Jake Boss to a contract extension in February despite back-to-back losing seasons. In May, he promoted from within to fill the men’s tennis coaching position after the former coach resigned.
Batt’s public comments Monday should at least ease some fears for fans of those programs.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the opportunities provided by college athletics,” he said. “Whether it’s what we’re going to do inside of Champions Blue, the way in which we’re going to evaluate and try to continue to maximize our revenue potential, those are evolved tactics to protect ultimately the same mission. That mission has always been about changing lives and providing life-changing opportunities for young people. They go hand in hand.”