Mitch Barnhart says Kentucky has over 200 NIL deals currently in place

Mitch Barnhart’s first comments about Name, Image, and Likeness legislation back in June suggested he wasn’t a big fan of this new era of college athletics. During an appearance on Kentucky Sports Radio, Kentucky’s athletic director said he’s warming up to NIL as several of the school’s student-athletes take advantage of new opportunities.

“If I wasn’t excited before, it wasn’t — and Matt, you know this about me. I’m conservative by nature. I’ve built our program from a conservative platform of, we’re going to walk slowly and do things gently. So, I’m going to gather information on everything that we do and make sure we’re proceeding through those processes the right way. NIL was brand new in June and I’m not going to sit here and say I knew everything about it. So to sit there and then go, this is the grandest landscape going forward would have been really not in my DNA to do that, number one. Number two, I don’t think I had enough information or enough runway to understand it.” 

Governor Andy Beshear signed the executive order allowing student-athletes in Kentucky to profit off their name, image, and likeness on June 24. Since then, Barnhart said roughly 100 of UK’s 500 student-athletes have signed NIL deals. In total, 230-240 NIL deals have been registered with UK’s compliance office, approximately 120 from the men’s basketball and football teams. Barnhart is pleased with UK’s NIL process so far but wants to keep monitoring it over the next year.

“I won’t say excited,” Barnhart said of his current thoughts on NIL. “I want to see how it works over the course of the next six months, twelve months. I’m excited for some of the kids to do some of the things that they’re doing. It’s been fun to watch some of the things that have happened. I’ll give you an example from some of our young people this summer. Some of our medal winners and those folks were able to capitalize on some of those pieces for them individually. That was unique. That might not have ever happened before so yes, it was really cool to watch those things happen.”

Maintaining Balance

In June, Barnhart expressed concern that NIL would lead to dissent in locker rooms as some student-athletes cashed in on deals and others did not. Today, Barnhart said maintaining harmony among players and balance between the name on the front of the jersey and the name on the back remains a high priority.

“I also want to make sure we find a balance in making sure we’re not losing the fact that we’re representing Kentucky and I’m always trying to make sure we find balance in all of these conversations. What we tend to do is we tend to run to one side of the argument or the other and say it’s all or nothing and if we can find the balance in this stuff, that’s what’s critical because I think you’ve got to make sure locker rooms are sound, you’ve got to make sure everyone is feeling included, you’ve got to make sure that there are opportunities for people to prosper and you’ve got to make sure at the end of the day that young people aren’t being taken advantage of and we’re working through all those processes.”

The Next NIL Step

The next hurdle in NIL is making sure Kentucky has a plan in place when Governor Beshear’s executive order expires in January. Barnhart hopes by then federal legislation will be in place.

“I think we’re going to have to change because the executive order from the Governor will expire in January. We’ll have to have a permanent law on the books for our state if there’s not federal legislation that overrides all of that. So I think we’re moving in a positive direction in terms of the way we’re managing it. I’m excited that our young people, clearly they are interested in it and I think that’s a good thing.”