Mitch Barnhart opens up on Mark Stoops, Big Blue Nation's 'angst' with Kentucky football

Is Mark Stoops on the hot seat? There are 37.5 million reasons for him not to be due to his contract but there is no denying the currently temperature in the fanbase. The Big Blue Nation is currently very upset with the direction of the Kentucky football program. Some of the noise got louder on Monday night and Tuesday morning when Stoops showed up as a reported candidate for the Virginia Tech opening.

The natives are getting restless. That might be an understatement. On Tuesday, Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart spoke with the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Jon Hale after a Champions Blue board of governors meeting about the current direction of the Kentucky football program. Was this a vote of confidence?

READ: Mitch Barnhart still confident Mark Stoops can return UK to football glory (Jon Hale | Herald-Leader)

“Make no mistake about it, we want success,” Barnhart told the Herald-Leader when asked about the state of the football program. “We want to work through it. We’ve worked through these things before. I think if people look at the history, what we’ve done in Kentucky, we’ve always found our way through. We’ve worked through difficult moments.”

“If everyone will reflect on the program that (Stoops) inherited and where he took us for eight straight years. Then the changes in the world of college athletics occurred, and it was a struggle for us for a couple of years just to try and find our way. And so that middle part, everyone was pretty much on board, and everyone was fine, and now we’re having to adjust to some changes in college athletics and work our way through it.”

This sounds like Barnhart is publicly admitting that Kentucky did not handle the NIL transition well after the 2021 season where numerous schools used NIL collectives to build rosters. UK very much dragged its feet, and that obviously led to some team-building issues. Then everyone was hit with some more change as we shift into the rev-share era where UK will have to pay over $20 million annually to student-athletes as well as needing extra funds to help circumvent the Cat. UK has gone all-in with JMI to help with NIL moving forward, but the football program has started to shift to a heavy transfer portal philosophy when it comes to team-building. The Cats added 50 new players to the roster in the offseason and over half of them were transfers. Another big transfer portal class will be needed this offseason no matter who the coach is. Money is needed to land transfers. Finding the right balance between evaluation for the present and evaluating for the future has not been an easy transition.

“Mark has been a great developer of talent,” Barnhart said. “If you look at the guys that have gone on from this program, he has developed talent incredibly well. We’re trying to figure out the balance of making that adjustment between developing and ready-to-play. … But there’s a difference in that, and so we’re finding a way to how do you marry those two pieces up and still have an opportunity to be the program everybody wants you to be.”

Kentucky shifted to a free agency-driven model in 2025. That model has not delivered results through 20 quarters of football. Mitch Barnhart says that he understands “the angst and the desire for us to be the program that has an opportunity to enjoy those celebratory moments” similar to the ones occurring at Indiana and Missouri right now. The long-time leader of the athletic department says Kentucky is not where they want to be but wants to see how the end of the season goes.

“Are we where we want to be? Absolutely not, but we will continue to battle and see if we can find it. We’ve got seven games left and an opportunity to get better every week,” Barnhart told the Herald-Leader. “I watch our team, and there are young guys in our program getting better.”

“I’m thankful that he’s done a lot for us, and I want to make sure that we fight with him and give him the best chance we can to go forward.”

What happens if the season doesn’t turn around? We will just have to wait to find out.