Mitch Barnhart isn’t shouting from rooftops. He’s not firing off tweets. But behind the scenes, Kentucky’s longtime athletic director is quietly fighting to preserve something bigger than any NIL deal or transfer portal splash: the future of Olympic sports.
In an interview on KSR, Barnhart made it clear—while revenue distribution and NIL dollars are evolving, Kentucky won’t let the "non-revenue" sports fade into the background. Every fan knows that football and basketball are the engines of a program. But he went on to talk about how emotional it was to the Kentucky's "pitch" that sent them to the College World Series in Omaha, or Sydney McLaughlin chase gold on the world stage after tracking them down at Kentucky.