Mark Pope Talks JMI Partnership, Calls Mitch Barnhart's Leadership in NIL Space 'Incredible'

The relationship between Kentucky and its multimedia rights partner, JMI, has been all the talk in recent days. Two days after KSR’s story on Wednesday about Kentucky’s recruiting efforts, which touched on the topic, Mark Pope addressed the conversation for himself.

During Friday’s press conference, Pope was asked about Kentucky’s need for a general manager to be in charge of NIL and other matters. While answering that question, Pope went on to address the recent talk circulating about JMI, Kentucky’s media partner’s involvement with NIL, giving a lot of credit to Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart.

Pope Says Kentucky is in ‘Such a Good Spot Right Now’

Mark Pope went into some detail on the JMI partnership and Mitch Barnhart’s involvement. He was entirely positive about the partnership.

“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 further applauded his team’s involvement with JMI. He called his team “incredible in the dynamic times.”

“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,” he said.

The Recruiting Relationship Between Kentucky and JMI

Kentucky is yet to land a commit in the 2026 class. KSR’s Jacob Polacheck and Jack Pilgrim shared the role of JMI in the recruiting struggles, among other topics, in a feature story on Wednesday night.

For context, the University of Kentucky and JMI reached an agreement in August to extend their partnership through 2040 for a multimedia rights agreement valued at $465 million. That agreement features the creation of JMI’s BBNIL Suite that serves as Kentucky’s in-house NIL collective. Through it, athletes can broker deals with UK’s 200+ official partners, or try to find their own third-party deals; however, Mitch Barnhart himself admitted the latter may be trickier than the former, as the university strives to protect the brand.

KSR reported on Wednesday that JMI, in conjunction with the UK basketball staff, is requiring prospective student-athletes to sign away NIL rights that would normally be untouched at any other school. A highly structured brand partnership agreement is something uncommon at other schools, but it is something Kentucky has pursued in accordance with JMI, making this arrangement unique to the current landscape of college basketball recruiting.

“I will say that Kentucky is the only school I’ve dealt with that even has anything remotely like this in their contracts,” one anonymous source said.

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