Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart gave his annual state of the program press conference Friday afternoon at Kroger Field. His message: Things are good, but the balancing act continues.
The AD confirmed the expected. After a successful “pilot initiative” during the home baseball season at Kentucky Proud Park, beer and seltzer drink sales will be expanded to all UK athletics events, including Kroger Field for football and Rupp Arena for basketball.
“I noticed that everybody got amazingly more busy on their (computers and phone) when I said that,” Barnhart teased the media after making the announcement. “Get to the good stuff. You showed up for one thing today. I get it.”
There was more to Friday. Much more.
Start with the good: UK won four SEC titles this past season. Shout-outs to rifle, men’s tennis, men’s soccer and volleyball. Football reached a seventh straight bowl game. Women’s track and field finished sixth at nationals. Softball again earned an NCAA Tournament berth. Baseball reached a super regional. Gymnastics and STUNT both excelled.
For the sixth straight year, UK will finish in the top 20 of the Director’s Cup, which tracks results of 20 collegiate sports.
Now to the future: New field turf has been installed at Kroger Field. Nutter Field House renovation should be nearly complete by football season. A new indoor track and field facility is under construction on the grounds of the old Cliff Hagan baseball stadium. Memorial Coliseum renovation has begun with all 2023-24 athletics events shifting to Rupp Arena. A few UK women’s basketball games will be played at Transylvania.
Now the chaotic. NIL leads the list. A group of UK athletics officials, including men’s basketball coach John Calipari and softball coach Rachel Lawson, accompanied Barnhart to Washington, D.C., recently to meet with the Kentucky congressional delegation about name, image and likeness.
“We’ve got 50 states that are running it 50 different ways,” Barnhart said. “There’s just no way college athletics can continue to function in that way.”
Will Congress help establish uniformity? Drafts of NIL bills exist, but action isn’t imminent. Congress has bigger fish to fry. You can understand Barnhart’s plight, but the problem is self-made. The NCAA clung too long to its outdated amateur athletics model. Now it wants Congress to clean up the mess.
Then there’s conference expansion. Texas and Oklahoma will officially make the SEC a 16-team conference in 2024. That hatched a football scheduling debate. It was recently announced that, at least for the 2024 season, the two-division format will be scrapped, but the league will continue to play eight conference games. That’s fine by Barnhart.
“I believe in eight for a lot of reasons,” Barnhart said. “I believe in eight because ours is a hard league; the wear and tear on our student athletes. Those four games that we have a chance to schedule doesn’t mean they are not difficult games, but the separation for an SEC game is a challenge. To throw in nine and have another (Power Five) game, if we’re mandated to keep that game, that would be 10 and we would only have two choices to find other games to play.”
Barnhart: College athletics is about education and competition
And don’t forget about the transfer portal. Or Kentucky’s legalized sports gambling, which will begin sometime this fall. That brings its own challenges for Barnhart and staff. Or added travel costs brought about by SEC expansion.
“College athletics is about education and competition,” Barnhart said. “Don’t lose sight of that. Education and competition. Putting diplomas in hands and rings on fingers. That’s what we’re in this thing for.”
In the current climate, college athletics appears to be all about money, however. Mega-salaries. Mega-conferences. Mega-donors. More and more, it’s professional sports at the collegiate level, where it’s all about television dollars and bigger is always better.
How do you hold on to that foundation of “education and competition” while in the crosswinds of change is not just a balancing act, but it’s the fundamental question.
That’s not just the state of UK athletics, but all college athletics.
