Mitch Barnhart wants SEC leaders to ‘know what’s most important’ in decision-making

SEC Spring Meetings were always important but this year’s edition held more significance with all of the changes coming to college athletics. Transfer portal, NIL’s future, the College Football Playoff (CFP), and finding additional revenue streams have all come into the focus. The league has some big decisions to make in a short amount of time. There will be some bumps along the way.

Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart wants his school and colleagues in the conference to keep their eye on the prize.

“It’s so easy to look at decisions in silos or one-offs,” Mitch Barnhart told Paul Finebaum on Wednesday evening in Destin.” I think that one of the things that will be important — at least from our lens at Kentucky and I hope our lens as a conference — is we look at these things in the total.”

“Is the decision-making around the CFP? Is the decision-making around football scheduling? Those things are all very inner-related, in my mind. For us at Kentucky, they’re very inner-related. I want to make sure that we know what’s most important. Our finances are part of that conversation. Our fan base is a part of that conversation. Keeping hope alive for our programs is really, really important. Opportunity is important for our kids. I think those things are all inner-related. I think as a group of leaders, we’ve gotta make sure that we’re thinking about them together.”

There are important decisions to be made. Coaches and administrators might not agree on every topic. What works for one school might not work for the other. We are seeing that play out on a conference level as the ACC and Big 12 have proposed a 5+11 expanded playoff format with one automatic bid for each conference plus highest-ranked Group of Five conference champion as opposed to the 4+4+2+2+1 model that would give the Big Ten and SEC eight total automatic bids.

Everyone is having to work together to find some sort of consensus. That is no different for the leaders of the SEC.

Each decision has an impact on the other. Mitch Barnhart wants the conference, behind Greg Sankey’s leadership, to consider everything at play when making individual decisions. There is likely a reason why we won’t hear about anything final being determined this week.

From a Kentucky point of view, staying at an eight-game conference schedule in football and having playoff access if a 9-3 year with a winning record in conference play occurs again seems most important. That’s where the opportunity comes into play. However, the financial issues loom large. UK must have enough revenue to pay athletes and keep their entire athletic department operating. That means not cutting sports or jobs. That could mean becoming more willing to do certain things that you haven’t in the past. Some things like playing a nine-game schedule and being open to the revenue streams that play-in games for the CFP that the auto bid structure could bring. Flexibility from everyone is needed.

“If you think them in pieces, I think that’s when you begin to maybe make some bad decisions,” Barnhart said. “So I’m hopeful that we look at them in the aggregate.”