Recent claims that JMI Sports is prohibiting University of Kentucky athletes from entering into NIL deals with competitors to the school’s corporate partners are false, according to athletic director Mitch Barnhart.

Yes, as part of the agreements signed by UK athletes for revenue-sharing payments from the school, athletes are prohibited from using university logos, facilities and other trademarks in any endorsements for businesses that are not affiliated with JMI and UK. However, athletes are still permitted to sign their own endorsement deals with other companies as long as they do not wear UK gear in the advertisements, UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart told the Herald-Leader in a one-on-one interview Tuesday.

JMI’s role in UK’s NIL setup has come under fire in recent weeks, sparked in large part by a story from Kentucky Sports Radio that cited anonymous sources who attributed the men’s basketball program’s failure to sign any 2026 high school recruits so far at least in part to JMI limiting UK athletes to deals with its existing advertising partners.

UK announced in August that JMI, its multimedia marketing rights partner since 2014, was taking over NIL operations previously managed by collectives outside the athletic department in the form of a fan subscription service called BBNUnited as part of an extension to its partnership that would run through 2040.

Comparing JMI’s role to the previous function of the outside collectives is not simple due to a series of rule changes brought about by the NCAA’s House settlement, which went into effect July 1. Now, schools are allowed to distribute up to $20.5 million directly to athletes, but NIL contracts must be approved by a third-party clearinghouse called NIL Go, which ensures the deals are for legitimate business purposes and are for fair market value. Prior to the House settlement, NIL collectives across the country had essentially operated as pay-for-play entities which guaranteed top athletes massive contracts in exchange for little-to-no actual endorsement activities.

Barnhart was on the NCAA committee tasked with implementing the specifics of the House settlement and has insisted that UK will operate within those guidelines, even as other schools have pushed back against the restrictions and some pundits have speculated those restrictions will not stand up to future legal challenges without federal legislation codifying them.

Barnhart appeared on the Wildcat basketball pregame show Saturday to respond to some of the criticism of UK’s NIL setup and the JMI deal. In a 30-minute interview with the Herald-Leader three days later, he addressed JMI’s role in negotiating athlete NIL deals, the department’s secrecy about its revenue-sharing split, whether the men’s basketball program needs a general manager, rumors he is considering retiring next year and more.

You can read an excerpt from the Q&A below. Questions have been slightly edited for clarity and brevity.

HL: Not every conference has agreed to this College Sports Commission’s enforcement agreement, so it feels like people are operating by different sets of rules right now. How do you approach that in this NIL space at the moment?

Barnhart: “I think that there’s about three or four different avenues of things going on, conversations going on, which I think are confusing to people. One, you have the conversation, what was done prior to July 1. Then you have the post-July 1 and the beginning of the College Sports Commission and NIL Go and the cap space. All of those things have come together. Different schools have got more room in their cap space based upon all of those factors. And so I think that’s where the confusion lies on a lot of people’s parts. The participation agreement would ensure that everyone is agreeing to the principles of the College Sports Commission.

“I was on a call today and felt like progress has been made. I think everybody wants to get there. There’s some state laws and some legalese that has slowed that progress. There is, I would say, hope that something will happen after the first of the year, and then we’ll get to bring that all together. Until it does that, there are rules that I think everyone can agree to, and there’s a process for those rules that they have to go through the court, and they also have to go through a couple of attorney generals. And have a 30-day period that they have to go before the plaintiffs (in the House settlement) and the 30-day period before the attorney generals before all those can be implemented. Some of those have been implemented, and we could all agree on those. Others are sort of working their way through the process. The combination of the participation agreement, getting some of those rules vetted and getting them on the books has — probably the word would be clunky — made it a little bit clunky here at the beginning of everything.

“But, I think that progress is being made, and I think people care, and they’re trying to stay within guardrails to move it down the path. But again, when you hear conversations publicly about different people doing different things, it gets confusing, and for many frustrating. That’s where I think it’s hard for a fan to sit here and say, ‘Well, why they get to do that and we don’t?’ or ‘They’re doing something completely different than we’re doing it.’ And so I think we’re trying to be steady in our approach. We think that we’re within the guardrails of what they’ve given us, and we think we’ve got a good plan. We’re just going to keep working at it from that perspective.”

HL: Of the schools who have kept their NIL collectives outside the department, do you feel like there are people still operating in the pre-July 1 landscape?

Barnhart: “No, I think everybody’s trying to get to the spot where everyone’s working through the NILGo system. We’ve all agreed that that’s where we’re going to head. And I mean, deals are going through there, and all schools are putting their deals in there. We’ve had, again, several hundred deals go through, and we’re well into seven figures of deals that have been approved for our student-athletes. Other places are doing the same thing. … Obviously getting the NILGo was very difficult, to get that up and running. That was a major undertaking, and so to get to the rhythm of how that works has not been easy for everybody. I mean, that is a complete transition in how that works. And I think that people are getting into the rhythm of how that works and how they’re able now to activate sponsorships and activate deliverables for people. And is it within the range of compensation, and is there a valid business purpose to it? I think that is the thing that has made it. I would say one of the better parts: Is there valid business purpose to what is being done? And then it gives it some direction. So, I think we’re making progress there. And feel that obviously, as the College Sports Commission gets their staff up and running and they get more people involved in their staffing … that will be certainly helpful.”

HL: Are the numbers you cited at the October Champions Blue meeting ($3,000 average per NILGo-approved deal with a maximum around $50,000) still accurate for UK athletes?

Barnhart: “Yeah, I think we’re trending in the same way. I think that some of our student-athletes are certainly starting to think, ‘Hey, there’s some things that we can do, and there’s value there.’ As you’ve watched our volleyball team play, their visibility and their notoriety in our community has certainly expanded. And that’s expanded their reach, and you’ve seen that. You can call it ‘hot market,’ whatever you want to call it. I think there’s value in that, and we want to help them maximize that. I think we’ve got opportunities to do that at a really high level, and our people are excited about that. It’s pretty cool to watch it all transpire, to be honest with you. I enjoy watching our young people have success at that.”

HL: As we talk about the JMI part of this, what do you view as the advantages of this setup?

Barnhart: “First off, JMI has got over 200 partners, so we come with a ready war chest of people that are ready to access, have never had access before to have our student-athletes work with them. So, we got 200 people that are involved at JMI. They’ve got a sales force that is fully ready to go to help. They are activating dollars that are above our advertising revenues for those young people, and they’re ready to put those in place for those that have a fit. And you have to have the right fit and all of that. … So, it’s got to be right person, right company, and you put those in the right fit. But I think that the beauty of having a qualified, active sales force with 200 partners that are very, very interested in your program, and with student-athletes that have success and that are very marketable — I think the thing that people lose sight of is we’ve got a really wonderful set of student-athletes that you might want to align yourself with. And I think it’s a really cool thing.

“And so, I think that’s where JMI — they’re experts in their field. They have done everything from national deals to hot-market deals to local deals and everything in between. So they’ve shown they can do all those things. For athletes that have been here, they see that a little more clearly than people that are coming in new, especially from people outside the Kentucky market. There’s an education process. We’re working our way through all that, but, I mean, make no mistake about it, there’s no one that can come in with that kind of bandwidth from the outside. Just saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a group of people that we’re gonna market ourselves to. Who’s gonna sell us, for us?’ (And JMI says), ‘Well, we do. We’re gonna go do that. We’re gonna make the match, and we’re gonna work at it pretty hard.’ And we’ve got, again, a very dedicated sales team, who, by the way, is doing an average of $35 to $40 million a year in revenues for their network in and of itself. So, they’re experts at doing that. It’s not like this is just, ‘Hey, we think that we’re going to try this sales thing for the first time.’ They’re experts at it.”

HL: When an athlete accepts revenue sharing money from UK, do they automatically get tied into the JMI deal, or do they opt into that separately?

Barnhart: “There’s some things that they’re opting into. OK, there’s some things they opt into, and obviously that’s a part of that process. And then there’s some things that we say, ‘Hey, does this fit you? Does this fit you? Do you want us to go out and find you (a deal)? Is there some things that make sense in a marketing piece, a partnership piece, so to speak, or a sponsorship piece?’ And if it doesn’t, you’ve got your own thing; you’re not prohibited from doing your own thing. We’ve shown that on many cases with student-athletes in our program. We’ve got student-athletes in our program that have got deals that are outside our partners, that they’ve gone and had an opportunity to go access and do those themselves. They just can’t use our IP marks in that process. Part of the ability to use the Kentucky marks, which we think is super valuable, is that relationship with JMI. So yes, that is part of that process. But to go do your own thing, you can certainly do that. That happens all the time on the pro sports scene. You see high-, high-level, elite-level professional athletes that go do an ad, and they do not use the marks of the team that they’re with in any way, shape or form. They may use the same colors, and you see that. You go, OK, I get it, the alignment. You know who it is, and the company’s saying, ‘We’re good, but we just don’t need to pay for the marks.’ OK, fine, then you can go do that, and you’re perfectly capable of doing that.”

HL: Say a company who is a competitor of one of your partnerships approaches an athlete, what is the process for them? Does JMI then go to your partner and say, ‘Here’s the deal?’

Barnhart: “The logistics, so generally the student-athlete or the representative is coming to us and saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got this deal we’d like to (do).’ OK, fine, that’s OK. We’d certainly prefer that you give our partners a chance first, and if that’s something that doesn’t work for you and you still want to go do this, then that is OK. You just can’t use the marks.”

HL: How is that different than before July 1, because the original NIL executive order from the governor said you could deny deals that were in competition with your partners? Was that an issue before?

Barnhart: “I don’t know that it was an issue beforehand. I just don’t think it was really clear. I don’t think it was really clear. The goal, clearly, is we’ve got some wonderful people that are aligned with the University of Kentucky. These people have given incredible resources to our program, and our hope — and our goal — would certainly be to align our young people with our partners. That makes all the sense in the world. Sometimes that’s not the way it works. I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that there are friendships. I can use Trent Noah as an example. Trent has got relationships from his hometown, areas that he wants to respect. Got it. Want him to be able to do those things, if that’s important to him, and it is. It’s important to him. We’ve got young people that have come with deals already from their days in high school, that they’ve come to our program with things that are already in place. OK, then we’ve made provisions for that and worked through that. It’s a conversation. JMI has been really good about working through each of those scenarios. It’s not always just super, super easy, ‘Hey, we’ll just sort of work our way through it,’ but we work our way through it and we get there. And they’ve been at the table with our coaches and with our athletic department representatives and the student-athletes and their representatives. So it’s been OK.”

HL: Have you had any athletes that were denied a deal because it was with a competitor?

Barnhart: “Not that I’m aware of.”

HL: Outside collectives were taking a percentage of the money they raised. What percentage does JMI take?

Barnhart: “JMI doesn’t take any percentage. No, there’s no fee. There’s no fee. We’re fee-free.”

HL: In the last week fans have raised concerns about relationships between your staff and the staff at JMI. Do you think those are a conflict of interest?

Barnhart: “It’s never been an issue once. We’ve had long-standing relationships at this university with a lot of people that get really, really close. Jim Host, Tom Stulz, Paul Archey — it’s a really cool family, and I think that’s what makes it special, not a conflict. If it was a conflict, I wonder how our revenues and everything that we’ve worked so hard to grow have grown at such an amazing pace? We got one of the top-five deals in the country, and to have an opportunity to work with that group in a long-standing relationship is really cool. It is really cool.

“Host was with us 30-plus years, and everyone was thankful for that, right? We’ve been with JMI 11 years now. Signed on for another six, which puts it 15 out, which gives you a 25-year deal. So, it’s been a little bit misrepresented as a 25-year deal. It’s not. It’s another 15. So, we get to that spot, we’ve got relationships and people that have got relationships from that sales staff in our community at a high, high level. That makes this thing special. The fact that I’ve got people on my staff and there’s people in this community, somewhere along the way there’s going to be connections, all right? And I do believe that we’ve kept those conversations as apart as we possibly could.

“There’s not one day that we go and say, ‘Hey, if we do this, we can connect dots.’ We haven’t done that. I feel very comfortable that the relationship we’ve got with, initially host, then IMG, then JMI, those relationships have been things that have continued because Kentucky is a special place and people want to work with us. We want to have long-term relationships with people that care about this place.”

HL: What role does JMI play in the facilities plans since they’re giving those briefings at the monthly Champions Blue meetings? Are they making those decisions?

Barnhart: “No, no. Erik Judson, in his previous days he did a lot of work with the Padres and the stadium and the multi-use district down there. He’s done that at other places all across the country. Erik’s got an expertise in that. He’s very well connected to the sports architecture world. So, using the connections that he has — and we’ve got our own, because we’ve done a lot of that with some of the very same people — making sure that we’re trying to find really cool connections and conversations to see what are the possibilities here. We got to find a way to expand our buckets of revenue. We’ve got five buckets. If you look at the five buckets, they’re really well-defined. It’s tickets, it’s fundraising, it’s major contracts. It is our concessions and souvenirs business, which is not massively big. And then our conference revenue sharing. Those are the five, and they haven’t changed for decades. It’s been the same five for decades. So what has to change going forward? We’ve got to find some new revenue streams that are bringing us some steady flows of money, that may be outside the normal of athletics. Maybe it’s an events operation that brings in more events that you might be familiar with, whether it’s another concert or two. Or maybe it’s some other things that we’re bringing to us that we have a chance to access more revenues. Maybe it’s that multi-use district where there’s money that comes off an alignment to our stadiums or to our facilities and those kind of things. There’s a lot of pieces that we’re looking to try and find new ways that doesn’t end up being on the backs of our fans. That it ends up being something that is sort of an add-on to our program. It gives us a chance to say, hey, this is how we grow a little bit without an arms race in the ticket pricing world or having to go raise more money, and those kind of things where it’s very difficult. That has become more difficult as years have gone by.”

HL: So we’ve talked a lot about the NIL part of this, but the revenue sharing is the other half of it. Obviously, you all are not alone in keeping those numbers close to the vest. What is the reason for the secrecy there, and do you think some of this speculation could be ended by just sharing the numbers?

Barnhart: “No, I think, to be honest with you, it’s not so much secrecy. It’s just flexibility. We want the flexibility to be able to work. I think there’s two pieces to it. You want to keep the rev share and the NIL conversation separate, because they are separate. I think people have confused those. ‘Hey, I’ve got a $30 million NIL.’ Really, $30 million in NIL? That’s fascinating to me, how you’re going to pick up 30 million in NIL. So, it’s probably so much in rev share and so much in NIL, because knowing what we know about the marketplace, there’s not a lot of places out there that are putting together $30 million in NIL, in straight NIL. OK, so that’s No. 1.

“No. 2, the ability to be flexible and move that back and forth and say, maybe we’re recruiting a player for a sport that is more marketable publicly, we can go to them and say, ‘Hey, we think you’re better served over (here). We’re going to guarantee this in the rev-share piece, but over here in the NIL space, we’re going to do a different kind over here. That’s going to be different. OK, we’re going to do that differently.’ Or maybe that there’s a year where basketball and football are different in terms of their needs. I’m paraphrasing; maybe you need a certain position in football that requires more assets, so you do that differently. And in basketball, you’re not in that same spot this year.

“If you’re both in the same spot, then we got a conversation we got to have, and we got to make sure that we’re aligned in all that. So to sit here and put us in a box on both sports and say, this is the box, I have both coaches going, ‘OK, I’ve got my box. How do I either get out of my box or how do I get more in my box?’ I want to make sure we’re thoughtful about that. I think it gives us the best flexibility in terms of recruiting and who we’re recruiting, how we’re recruiting, what they bring to the table. And gives us a chance to be super, super thoughtful about what we’re doing. It’s not trying to be cloak and dagger. That’s not the issue. I mean, not a lot of folks are giving their numbers out anyway, but at the end of the day, I think it does give us the best flexibility for our program. And then a little bit, it protects our student-athletes. Everybody wants the big number, what’s the number? What I don’t want to do is get it down where each kid, each of our young people, is going, ‘OK, well, they’ve pegged that person for that.’ I don’t want to do that for those young people.”

HL: So obviously, you all are in a unique situation where you have a profitable men’s basketball program and a profitable football program, which is not the case in a lot of places. But it’s also in this revenue-sharing conversation more difficult, because the perception outside at least is because basketball will get more here than at other places — because they make money here — that football will get less than at other places in the league. How do you handle that?

Barnhart: “Yeah, I think that’s the balancing act that we’ve worked really hard at. I think that prior to July 1, everyone was pleased, happy. Fascinated that we had both rosters, and everybody loved both our rosters. Going forward because of the way, pre-July 1 and post-July 1, look, it’s going to become more difficult for everyone. Not just a Kentucky. It’s going to be difficult for everyone. And if you don’t have a football program and you’ve got rev share that looks a little bit different, maybe the schools that are non-football playing schools, it looks a little different for them. And it can be different for them. So, it’s a dance, and we’re working our way through it. I’m thankful I’ve got two coaches that clearly understand. They’ve been great working with both of them, and so we’re just working our way through it. I think to the fan base, that’s the beauty of Kentucky basketball, is that the name, image, likeness, opportunities for Kentucky basketball are significant. If we’re working very closely, we use the strength of that brand to work for the betterment of our entire department. Not just football, not just basketball, but for our entire department. If we do that well, and we can get football where we want it to be, it builds the brand in total for everybody. And then baseball and women’s basketball and a volleyball program that is deserving, they all win, and we have a chance to raise the tide of all the boats, so to speak.”

HL: Because so much of the current academic year was funded pre-July 1, is this year’s revenue sharing budget mostly going towards funding the next group of transfers or incoming recruits?

Barnhart: “So, the problem you’ve got a little bit is because on one you got a fiscal-year budget, an academic-year budget, whatever you want to call it, and then you’ve got an athletic-year budget. So football sort of runs January to December, and basketball sort of runs July 1 to June 30. And so there are two different sort of years, and we’re trying to match those together. And so, we’ve got more cap space. We’re trying to fill our cap space, trying to make sure we’re maximizing our cap space really, really well. Again, it’s just being flexible and making sure that we’re being thoughtful about how we use our dollars. You’ve got to have a group of young people in football that are going out of your program on December 31, and a new group, some of them will be coming in in January, and some of them won’t come till June or July. We get that, and we have to figure out how that plays out. But a lot depends on how many people you bring in January and how many people are staying from your program, carrying over from this year’s roster. So, the retention, new freshmen, new junior college that come in January, and then that group that would come in July is football. Basketball would start again, sort of July 1 in that zone, and then play out until the next year.”

HL: Will Stein hired a general manager. There’s been a lot of talk about that in basketball. I know two weeks ago you said that we get too hung up on the titles, which I understand, but do you think the basketball program needs someone in that role, whatever you want to call it?

Barnhart: “I think that it’s really important that we’re flexible, again. I like the word flexibility. You’re gonna think ‘Mitch, you’re using that word too much.’ I’m not. I do believe that giving Mark (Pope) the flexibility of how he wants to operate is really, really important. There are both cases on both sides, where I’ve seen people that have said, ‘Hey, if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t have a general manager because there’s too much separation.’ Other people want the separation. I think it depends on the personality of the coach, their ability to assess talent and their ability to have those conversations. Do they like that? Is it something comfortable for them? Uncomfortable for them? All of those pieces. Our talent assessment (in basketball) was fine until we lost a couple games, and then everybody started wondering about our talent assessment, correct, right? So that’s amazing to me, how that works.

“All of a sudden, now we win a few games — if we win a few games — the talent assessment was fine. OK, so let’s get real. So if that’s where Mark wants to be, and he thinks that’s something that fits him… it can change. Just because you’re in one spot doesn’t mean you can’t say, ‘Hey, you know what? I think maybe I could use a little help there, or maybe I’d like to change it up a little bit and do something a little bit different.’ OK, then let’s do that. We do have the ability to adjust. I think there’s a couple of really well-known coaches out there right now that are talking about how they built their programs, and they talked about adaptability and adjusting and being able to do something different.

“OK, so what was working today may not work tomorrow. What’s not working today may work tomorrow. So, we’ve got to be able to adjust. I think people get hung up that all of a sudden once you make a decision one time, you can never change again. That’s not what this is about. The beauty of sports is the ability to adapt and to adjust and to change. The one thing I think we’ve hired here are some really, really bright people, really smart people. And they do understand how to adjust to what’s going on and to change. Will (Stein) wanted a general manager when he came in, wanted to do that. I think for a young head coach, probably important too. He’s got a lot on his plate. Hiring a new staff, trying to come in and get a program up and running. Could use some help that area. Probably a pretty smart decision. Mark Pope has been a head coach a while, and how he determines what he wants to do going forward, clearly, that’s his call. I’m going to lean into him, and we’ll have those conversations. But right now, the focus is just trying to find a way to get better every day on the basketball court and win some games and represent Kentucky.”

HL: There’s been a lot of speculation too, about your own future. Obviously, there’s the date in your contract for next summer when you can transition to the ambassador role. You’re approaching the time you’d have to give notice for that. Have you made a decision on that?

Barnhart: “Two things. I love competing. You know that. You know I love this place with all my heart. We came here in 2002 and planned on saying six to eight years and stayed a lot longer. I know there’s people that get frustrated because I’ve been here a long time, and that’s OK. I sense that. An old boss of mine told me one time, every time you make a 50-50 decision, you lose 50% of your friends. He’s probably not wrong, but we love Kentucky. I get up invigorated about what we’re doing at work. I love watching our kids compete. When that day comes — and don’t know — I’ll sit down with my family, and we’ll talk and determine what’s best for our family and for me, but most importantly, what’s best for Kentucky. I’ve got a couple, two-and-a-half years left on my contract. The ambassador clause is out there. It can go anytime after December 31, and if that’s something that’s best for this university, then we’ll have that conversation. If it’s something that we want to continue to work at it, I would like to win some more things. I like winning. The volleyball run has been a blast. I’d like to win at some more things and see what we got. And I love our coaches. We’ve got good people and fun to work with.”

HL: Has navigating the last two years, with everything you’ve had to do, changed your thinking on that one way or the other?

Barnhart: “The focus certainly has changed. I can say when I first started as an AD, you spent 75% of your time worrying about competition, 25% worried about the other stuff. I would argue it’s flipped. It’s flipped. You spend a great majority of your time worrying about the enterprise of sport and how we sustain it. Maybe on percentages I’m wrong, so hear me out. I just say it has changed. So don’t hold me to the percentage, OK, but I’d say it has changed. It has changed a little bit, where you’re spending a great deal of time in the nuances of the day-to-day. One thing I used to love doing was meeting all the recruits. I love to meet the recruits and their families, and you still do that, but, boy, it’s harder. It’s harder to meet a lot of them. The personal touches have changed a little bit — some of the things you used to do — because it’s so transient. When 35%-40% of your student-athletes are brand new to your program every year, all of a sudden, just getting to know everybody has changed a little bit. So it’s changed, but I still love competing. You still get that feeling when you come out and get ready to start a game, whatever that game is. I think the day that … changes a little bit is probably the day that it’s probably time for someone else to do that.”

This story was originally published December 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.