Mitch Barnhart Provides Assurances for Kentucky Football Ahead of Revenue Sharing

Mitch Barnhart was slow to embrace the first wave of drastic changes to college athletics. Ahead of another monumental shift in the sport that’s expected to arrive this summer, the Kentucky athletics director and head football coach are assuring fans that they will not get stuck behind the 8-ball.

If you listened to Mark Stoops talk about NIL and the transfer portal over the last year, there’s a good chance you heard him share his disdain for fundraising. Within the last week, he changed his tune.

“We’re in a better position right now than I have ever been. Hopefully, that will carry over,” Stoops said at his Monday press conference. “That doesn’t mean it’s an end-all, be-all, but we’ve worked hard behind the scenes to put ourselves in a position to try to catch up.”

It’s clear Kentucky was behind the Tennessees and the Ole Misses of the world who pushed the NIL rules to the limit on day one. Mitch Barnhart was initially hesitant to embrace everything NIL had to offer his programs. The UK AD said that will not be the case when revenue sharing is expected to arrive in college athletics on July 1, 2025.

There are still many details to be ironed out in the House vs. NCAA settlement. The biggest detail in question is how much money the athletics department will be tasked to directly compensate its student-athletes. The figure is expected to be somewhere around $20 million annually. Schools that choose to participate will not be required to divvy out a set dollar amount to specific sports. It sounds like Barnhart will make sure Kentucky does not have to play catch-up with its competitors once again.

“(There’s) so much work to be done and so many things that we’ve got to make sure that our football program is settled on that,” Barnhart said BBN Tonight. “We’ve assured him that the things that are important to him, he will have in place and that we’ll be able to find our way through to that starting point.

“But the foundational principle that we’ve got to make sure that all of our programs, specifically as we begin this initial push with football, have got the support that they need to be able to build our program and get it back where we want it to be.”

Barnhart made sure to acknowledge the needs of his other athletics programs, but it sounds like football will get first priority when revenue sharing begins, as will be the case with the 15 other schools in the SEC.