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The University of Kentucky, once a fortified blueblood athletic department, has faced major challenges over the past year, including the firing of head football coach Mark Stoops, a second-round exit from men’s March Madness, and a “disastrous” men’s basketball transfer portal window.
The Wildcats can now add public criticism from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear to their list of recent woes.
On Tuesday, Beshear posted a statement blasting recent decisions by university leadership, beginning with the new million-dollar salary awarded to athletic director Mitch Barnhart, who will retire June 30 and stay on in an advisory role. In the wake of the governor’s statements, Barnhart announced Thursday he would not take the job after all.
“I am losing confidence and growing increasingly concerned with the management and decision-making at the University of Kentucky,” Beshear said in a statement posted on X. “My concerns include the creation of a new $1 million job that has no defined duties and the announcement that the new dean of law was the only candidate not recommended by the law school facility.”
The athletic department announced Barnhart’s retirement on March 3, while saying he would transition to become “the first executive-in-residence of the UK Sport and Workforce Initiative.” Kentucky president Dr. Eli Capilouto said in a statement at the time that he would announce more details about the role “in the coming weeks.”
In preparation for the transition, Barnhart’s employment contract was amended to reflect a $950,000 annual salary as well as 10 free tickets to every football, men’s basketball, and baseball home game. His previous salary was $1.55 million. The contract runs until August 2030.
The contract also outlined Barnhart’s new duties in a series of five brief bullet points. It described the UK Sport and the Workforce initiative as “a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach to the study and promotion of sports.” It said Barnhart would “work collaboratively with the other leaders of the UK Sport and Workforce Initiative” and “devote time, attention, and abilities to other duties as assigned, as well as faithfully serve the University.”
Then, two days after Beshear blasted the school for the decision, Capilouto announced that Barnhart had decided not to take on the new job. “Mitch Barnhart came to me earlier this week to share his concern that the discussion surrounding his future role leading our sports workforce initiative has become a distraction from the work of our university,” he said. “Mitch and his family care deeply about this institution and our state, and they want the focus to return to the work that matters most for our students and the Commonwealth.”
Capilouto said the two would discuss the “terms” of his departure from the university, and that any “compensation associated with his departure will be supported entirely by private funds — not athletic funds, not funds that would go toward NIL opportunities or university funds — that I will raise.”
Barnhart said in a statement: “Work has already begun on the Initiative but recently it has become apparent that now is not the right time and we would never stand in the way of what we deem best.”
It’s rare for a sitting governor to make public statements chiding the athletic department of the state’s largest public university. However, Beshear would be the second in the past year to do so: Last fall, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry publicly blasted then-LSU athletic director Scott Woodward during the football coaching search—which resulted in Woodward and the school parting ways.
A spokesperson for Kentucky athletics declined to comment.
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