Mitch Barnhart expected to announce retirement as Kentucky’s athletic director
The finish of an period is nigh. Mitch Barnhart is expected to retire from his place as Kentucky’s athletic director, Pete Nakos reports. An announcement is expected this week, which can carry Barnhart’s 24-year tenure in Lexington to an finish. Barnhart has a clause in his contract that may enable him to step down from his function and grow to be a particular assistant to UK President Eli Capilouto with six months’ discover.
Barnhart is the longest-serving AD amongst Power Four faculties, passing Oklahoma’s Joe Castiglione, who introduced his retirement final summer time. He has emerged as a number one voice in school sports activities lately, serving as one in every of 10 athletic administrators on the NCAA’s Settlement Implementation Committee, which was shaped to information the nationwide rollout of the House case settlement, and as the chairman of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Committee in 2020-21. Barnhart has been the chair of the SEC athletic administrators since 2017 and likewise served on the College Football Playoff Committee, one in every of solely 4 individuals to serve on the choice committee for each males’s basketball and soccer postseasons. In 2019, he was named Division I AD of the Year by SportsBusiness Journal.
At Kentucky, Barnhart remodeled the athletics division, hiring head coaches in each sport however rifle and overseeing main services upgrades. Kentucky has received six NCAA championships throughout his tenure: males’s basketball (2012), volleyball (2020), and rifle (2011, 2018, 2021, 2022). The Cats have additionally received over 60 regular-season and match convention titles, together with first-time championships in baseball, ladies’s tennis, males’s golf, STUNT, and girls’s swimming and diving.
Barnhart stayed on as AD via some of the difficult occasions in school sports activities, serving to the division via the adjustments introduced forth by NIL and the House Settlement. In the previous two years, he is overseen the hiring of the three largest coaches within the division: Mark Pope to exchange John Calipari, Kenny Brooks to exchange Kyra Elzy, and, most lately, Will Stein to exchange Mark Stoops. He additionally shepherded the athletic division’s transfer to Champions Blue LLC, a holding firm created to give UK extra flexibility and generate income within the revenue-sharing period.
Barnhart could also be most remembered for hiring John Calipari and Mark Stoops, two of essentially the most profitable coaches within the faculty’s historical past, however his legacy extends far past Kentucky’s most well-known sports activities. Volleyball has emerged as a perennial energy underneath Craig Skinner, profitable the nationwide championship in 2020 and ending as the runner-up in 2025. The baseball program has taken an enormous step ahead underneath Nick Mingione, advancing to the varsity’s first-ever College World Series in 2024. The ladies’s basketball program has new life underneath Kenny Brooks.
The division has invested again in all three applications, constructing Kentucky Proud Park and renovating Historic Memorial Coliseum, the house of volleyball, ladies’s basketball, gymnastics, and STUNT. Kroger Field underwent a $126 million renovation in 2015 and is within the midst of $25 million price of enhancements. Rupp Arena, which is owned by the Lexington Center Corporation, has additionally gotten a big facelift.
Barnhart succeeded Larry Ivy in 2002 as the college’s tenth athletic director. He got here to Kentucky from Oregon State, the place he served in the identical capability from 1998 to 2002. Before Oregon State, Barnhart labored in athletics administration posts at Tennessee (1986-98), Southern Methodist University (1983-86), Oregon (1983), and San Diego State (1982-83). He has an intensive tree of former staffers who’ve gone on to grow to be Division I athletic administrators, together with Greg Byrne of Alabama, Mark Coyle at Minnesota, Rob Mullens at Oregon, Scott Stricklin at Florida, John Cohen at Auburn, DeWayne Peevy at DePaul, and Kevin Saal at Wichita State.
An official announcement is expected quickly.
