Mitch Barnhart: "I did say stop the chatter. I didn't say no one could apologize."

Back in the summer, the UK Athletics family had a bit of a household squabble right as Mark Stoops’ football program began fall camp over at the Joe Craft Football Training Facility and as John Calipari’s basketball program was out of the country for four preseason exhibitions in the Bahamas. A sibling rivalry got heated when between games in the Bahamas, John Calipari called the University of Kentucky a “basketball school” while expressing his want for a new basketball practice facility on campus. Back in Lexington, Mark Stoops and his locker room took offense to Calipari’s public comments when, again, Kentucky Football was in the middle of preseason excitement and fall camp. We won’t revisit the schematics of how that one phrase ignited a bomb beneath the family dinner table, but conversations in the days that followed came up in KSR’s Friday morning interview with Mitch Barnhart, so we should at least address Barnhart’s new comments regarding last August.

Appearing by phone on Friday’s show, which we are very grateful for, Barnhart was asked by Matt Jones about several eye-opening claims in Kyle Tucker’s new bombshell mailbag for The Athletic. One of those was, according to the mailbag, that Barnhart told Calipari to stay quiet after his “basketball school” remark when Calipari intended to make an immediate public apology to Stoops from the Bahamas.

Tucker wrote, “(Barnhart’s) response to Calipari’s regrettable “basketball school” comments this summer was bizarre at best. Calipari wanted to immediately publicly apologize and was told by Barnhart to keep his mouth shut. Barnhart then joined football coach Mark Stoops for a stunning press conference that felt like an hour-long clapback at Calipari. How in the world was fanning those flames productive?”

On Friday, Barnhart was asked if Tucker is correct in alleging he silenced Calipari, to which Barnhart said he never told anyone they couldn’t apologize, but he did “stop the chatter.”

Barnhart explained to KSR, “I think if we go back in the Wayback Machine and we walk through that scenario, a couple different things: one, for that early part when the team was in the Bahamas and I was at CFP meetings or somewhere I was traveling, as we began our fall camp in football, and all that transpired. A couple things happened and I was coming back from off the road and I said let’s stop the chatter. We didn’t need to get into more public debate.”

Continuing on, Barnhart said Calipari and Stoops have since left the past in the past. “I wanted the two guys to be able to work, to get it put behind them, for them to visit, and for them to move on. And they have done that. Both of them have said they talked, it’s behind them, and that’s where we are.

“So yeah, I did say stop the chatter. I didn’t say no one could apologize. I would hope, absolutely, to the spot where my two most high-profile coaches absolutely make sure that they’re on the same page and moving forward and they have done that and they put it behind them and both of them have moved on and they’re going to do what they do in representing our program and going on. So that’s what that was.”

In a follow-up question, Matt Jones asked if Barnhart regrets having the press conference with Stoops while Calipari was still in the Bahamas on a strict no-chatter notice. Barnhart noted he always has an end-of-summer press conference at the beginning of fall camp, only last year his press conference was a week later because he was out of town on work on Kentucky Football Media Day. So in a matter of unfortunate timing, his annual Q&A with the media was delayed until a post-Saturday scrimmage press conference with Stoops, who was already scheduled to speak about fall practice before Calipari made the original remark.

Here’s that Barnhart press conference from last August:

Back to Matt’s present-day question, Barnhart explained, “Hindsight is always 2020, Matt. I mean, I’m really good looking back. You know, when you’re in the crucible or you’re in the crosshairs of it, you know, it’s–at the time, I just didn’t think it was healthy. I always take the podium in the fall before we begin our season. Usually, I do it the same day as Fan Day, which would have been a week earlier. I came back and I said I’ll do my normal deal that I normally do and address some of this stuff.”

Barnhart then defended the family of UK Athletics and spoke about how much Kentucky means to everyone.

“We’re gonna squabble from time to time, it ain’t gonna be perfect, it ain’t always going to be pretty. But at the end of the day, I would hope people would understand when we put that Kentucky shirt on, we’re walking out representing them and we want to do that to the best we possibly can.”

Hear those comments and more in the entire interview below on KSR’s YouTube channel, where we never stop the chatter.