‘Adapt when we need to adapt.’ Mitch Barnhart talks NIL, revenue sharing, more
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- Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart was interviewed on UK’s radio network.
- Barnhart discussed several top issues, including UK’s NIL resources.
- The interview occurred before Kentucky’s home men’s basketball game against Indiana.
During an interview on UK’s radio network, Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart stressed that his department is on solid footing in the ever-changing college sports landscape.
“We will have to continue to make sure that we’re within the framework that we can be effective, and that we’re giving our coaches and our student-athletes the best opportunity,” Barnhart said in a taped interview with Kentucky radio broadcaster Tom Leach. “We are incentivized at a high level, because there’s no one (who) wants to win more than our coaches, no one wants to win more than our student-athletes and our fans. Why in the world would we do anything but give ourselves the best chance to do that?”
Barnhart’s comments — which came prior to the men’s basketball game against Indiana in Rupp Arena — came amidst continued discourse about how UK is positioned in the current college sports landscape.
Barnhart, who has been the athletic director in Lexington since 2002, has been the subject of fan angst on numerous fronts. This includes Kentucky’s investment in name, image and likeness resources, the revenue-sharing budget and the school’s multimedia-rights partnership with JMI Sports, which is set to run through 2040. Kentucky and JMI Sports agreed to a new partnership deal over the summer.
“There’s other schools doing it very similar to what we’re doing,” Barnhart said. “Whether that is through their multimedia rights partner, they’re bringing some of their collectives in house, absolutely they are. There is no one size fits all. I think that’s what everyone wants to assume, is there’s only one way. There is not only one way. There’s multiple ways to do this thing, and we think this is effective for us.”
Barnhart added that he believes UK has the ability to adapt to the current landscape based on its partnership with JMI.
“It also gave us an ability to be flexible in terms of the BBNIL as we go forward in that suite of opportunities for our young people,” Barnhart said. “So they’ve got real time opportunities that they came in, JMI came in, and said ‘Here’s some revenues on top of what we generally create. And these will be specific for our student athletes to be able to access those in the NIL world.’”
These criticisms have come while major changes have occurred to UK’s football program and as the men’s basketball team has floundered to begin its season.
On Dec. 1, UK fired former football coach Mark Stoops after 13 seasons. The Wildcats moved swiftly to replace him, hiring Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein — a former quarterback at Louisville who grew up a Kentucky fan — later that same day.
On the basketball front, second-year head coach Mark Pope is off to a 6-4 start this season, with an 0-4 record against high-major opponents. Kentucky isn’t included in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 rankings for the first time under Pope’s leadership. Earlier this year, the Herald-Leader reported that the payroll number for the UK basketball team is around $22 million.
Following Stein’s introductory press conference Dec. 3, Barnhart was asked by the Herald-Leader about the football program’s revenue-sharing budget.
“We’re confident in what we’re doing,” Barnhart said in an animated response. “People have asked that question 19 different ways, from all the stuff that’s been going on, and it’s exhausting. Enough. Enough about, ‘Have we got enough?’ We’ve got enough. We’re working at it just like everyone else is working at it. We’re no different.”
Kentucky hasn’t disclosed how it’s splitting the $20.5 million it’s allowed to distribute to athletes between football, men’s basketball and other non-revenue sports. This has led to speculation about what those monetary breakdowns are.
Additionally, Kentucky’s multimedia rights partnership with JMI sports has come under fan scrutiny this week. JMI Sports is responsible for negotiating name, image and likeness endorsement deals for UK athletes, among other duties.
This aspect, specifically, has been a talking point due to Pope’s lack of recruiting results with top high school players. Kentucky basketball doesn’t have a commitment from the 2026 recruiting class. A pair of five-star high school seniors — small forward Tyran Stokes and power forward Christian Collins — were thought to be on the doorstep of committing to the Wildcats prior to the November early signing period.
Both players remain uncommitted. Pope’s program is one of only two SEC schools, along with Georgia, yet to land a commitment from the 2026 high school class.
Near the end of his weekly press conference Friday afternoon, Pope turned a question about his thoughts on adding a “general manager” position to his staff into a defense of the JMI deal.
“We have this incredible partnership with JMI that’s enabled us to do so much. They’re doing incredible work for us,” Pope said. “The way Mitch has kind of worked this and led this... I have a whole team of people that are working contracts, working possibilities.”
“One of the complicated things right now is that there’s not a clear interpretation of exactly what the rules are,” Pope added. “... We’ll make sure that we always air on the side of doing this legal. Which is a guessing game, because nobody knows exactly what’s legal right now. There’s just a million different parts of this.”
Barnhart was on the NCAA committee tasked with implementing the components that a federal judge approved in the House Settlement, which allowed schools to directly pay athletes. This included the creation of a clearinghouse to approve NIL deals and ensure they met fair market value and were for legitimate business purposes.
Barnhart acknowledged that, sometimes, UK student-athletes aren’t able to use UK’s logos and other marks in outside NIL deals. But he also pointed to national NIL opportunities that have come the way of student-athletes during major events like March Madness. An example of this was earlier this year when former UK basketball player Amari Williams struck up a deal with Weetabix, a British breakfast food.
“I think it shows our ability to move where we need to move, and adapt when we need to adapt,” Barnhart said. “I think there’s a lot of programs out there who would have loved to have the opportunity to do what we have done.”
Barnhart also addressed the thinking that Kentucky’s NIL opportunities are restrictive to student-athletes.
“Are there things that when they come to the University of Kentucky — and they take opportunity, they take revenues from the revenue share or from the NIL — yes, there are some responsibilities they have to us, and that’s part of this deal. That’s that’s no different here than it is anywhere else in the country,” Barnhart said. “But at the end of the day, yeah, we are going to try and have people work with our folks first, if we can, and if that’s something that doesn’t work, and they want to go do some other things, they have the opportunity to do that.”
Pope also used his lengthy response Friday to praise JMI Sports president Paul Archey and Kim Shelton, who is the senior vice president of NIL Strategy and the executive director of UK NIL for JMI Sports.
Shelton — a former UK soccer player who recently served as the CEO of Lexington Sporting Club — also previously spent nearly a decade at JMI Sports in roles such as vice president of sponsorship sales, chief revenue officer and president of UK Sports and Campus Marketing.
“We’ve got great people that have done an amazing job in the JMI world of providing us resources for our program, and they are concerned,” Barnhart said. “It doesn’t benefit them to restrict us or to hurt our program or not give us the best chance to put the best roster we can on the court or on the field or wherever that happens to be.”
