Mitch Barnhart addresses the condition of Kentucky athletics, struggling teams

Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart has been under fire as of late due to the University’s struggling Men’s Basketball and Football programs, which are the two major money-makers.

While Kentucky Volleyball, Baseball, and Women’s Basketball have all succeeded in recent seasons, its two biggest brands have not. The Men’s Basketball team has not reached a Final Four since 2015, and the Football team missed postseason eligibility in back-to-back seasons under now former head coach Mark Stoops.

During an exclusive interview with UK Sports Network’s Tom Leach prior to Kentucky Men’s Basketball’s clash against Indiana Saturday night, Barnhart addressed these struggles at the top of the athletic department.

Mitch Barnhart: "The noise? There is a lot of it. Part of it is the responsibility to go win some things. We've got to go do that. We've got some teams doing that incredibly well. We got a couple that are — they're struggling, and we got to get them going."

— Jack Pilgrim (@JackPilgrimKSR) December 13, 2025

“The noise? There is a lot of it,” Barnhart told Leach. “Part of it is the responsibility to go win some things. We’ve got to go do that. We’ve got some teams doing that incredibly well. We got a couple that are — they’re struggling, and we’ve got to get them going.”

To make matters worse for Barnhart this week, KSR‘s Jack Pilgrim and Jacob Polacheck dove deep into into JMI Sports’ involvement with Kentucky’s NIL efforts, which has reportedly cost them a handful of high school recruits/transfer portal players. On Friday, Kentucky Basketball head coach Mark Pope touched on the matter and praised Barnhart.

“We’re in such a good spot right now, in the sense of, I’m telling you, and it’s like, this would probably be when someone needs to do like a super in depth New Yorker magazine 30-page article on Mitch, but his leadership in this space has been incredible, and I get to see it firsthand, where I have ADs from other major universities reach out and try to figure out, ‘How are you doing this?’” Pope said. “And how did you move ahead this way and this partnership with JMI? Paul [Archey] is incredible, and Kim [Shelton], who we work with day to day, is incredible.”

Pope went even deeper in detail on Kentucky‘s involvement with JMI. He claimed that the support that his team is getting from JMI is ‘ridiculous’.

“And when we get to write the book, there’s been a lot of late nights, tight deadlines, trying to get to winning spots and and so we have an incredible team in the dynamic times finding the landing on exactly the right spot is ultimately, that’s my job to get some space but the support that we’re getting is ridiculous, from managing the administration from JMI,” Pope said.

Kentucky football seemingly took a step forward following another disappointing season by hiring head coach Will Stein, former offensive coordinator at Oregon. Kentucky men’s basketball currently sits at 5-4 and has lost all four of its games against power-four competition this season. If improvement doesn’t come soon for both programs, the noise will continue to grow louder and louder around Barnhart and the Kentucky athletics department.