• Hometown: Kansas City, Kansas
• Year Hired: 2002
• Alma Mater: B.A. from Ottawa University (Kansas) and an M.S. in sports administration from Ohio University
• History: Barnhart was hired by the university in 2002 succeeding Larry Ivy. Barnhart served in the same capacity at Oregon State University from 1998-2002. He is the university's 10th athletics director. In April 2018, Barnhart signed an extension on his contract which will keep him at Kentucky until at least 2023.

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One of the foremost leaders in college athletics and SportsBusiness Journal’s reigning Athletic Director of the year, Mitch Barnhart is in his 18th year at the helm of the University of Kentucky Athletics Department.
 
Since his arrival in Lexington, Barnhart has steadily invested in the growth of all 22 UK teams while maintaining a singular commitment to the holistic development of Wildcat student-athletes. Matching resources to expectations has been a hallmark of his tenure, with the proof coming in the form of $300 million in facility improvements since 2007 and his bold pursuit of Elite 1-3-5. At the heart of everything are the core values Barnhart has instilled in the department he leads: character, integrity, knowledge, stewardship and competitiveness.
 
The aim of Elite 1-3-5 is for each UK team to be No. 1 by winning a conference or national championship, sustain a department-wide 3.0 grade-point average and rank in the top five of the Learfield IMG Directors’ Cup standings by 2022. It’s an ambitious undertaking, but UK students, coaches and staff have proven themselves capable of unmatched achievement. Four UK teams have won championships towards Elite 1-3-5, most recently with volleyball winning a second consecutive SEC championship and men’s soccer sweeping Conference USA regular-season and tournament titles.
 
UK is well positioned to pursue a top-five Directors’ Cup finish on the heels of the six best finishes in school history coming in the last seven seasons. Two seasons removed from a school-record 10th-place finish in 2016-17, UK Athletics finished 14th in 2018-19.
 
UK Athletics continues to excel in the academic component of Elite 1-3-5, as Wildcat student-athletes on scholarship have combined for a GPA of better than 3.0 in 14 consecutive semesters. In spring 2019, UK achieved a cumulative GPA of 3.201, the second best in school history. UK athletes have set records for graduation rates and maintained a perfect mark in the 15-year history of the NCAA Academic Progress Rate, making UK one of just two SEC schools to never incur an APR penalty.
 
Elite 1-3-5 is the successor to Barnhart’s 15 by 15 by 15 Plan, set forth in 2008. The 15 by 15 by 15 Plan called on UK Athletics to rank among the nation’s top 15 athletics programs and win 15 conference or national championships by 2015. At the same time, Barnhart set goals of a 3.0 composite GPA for Wildcat students and an even greater commitment to community service.
 
The academic goal was first achieved in the spring semester of 2010, with grades hitting a peak in spring 2014 with a school-record 3.218 composite GPA. Community service has risen to more than 4,000 hours annually and includes outreach to the Lexington area, the Commonwealth of Kentucky and as far away as Ethiopia, the Dominican Republic and Panama.
 
The Directors’ Cup objective was reached a year early when UK checked in at a then-school record No. 11 in the 2013-14 national all-sports standings.
 
The final goal was reached when UK men’s basketball claimed the 2015 SEC Tournament title, the 15th championship won by Wildcat athletes since 2008. In addition to being one of four NCAA Division I Athletics Directors of the Year in 2015, Barnhart also was one of four finalists for Athletics Director of the Year as chosen by the SportsBusiness Journal and he received the Sports Business Award from the Bluegrass Sports Commission that year.
 
Four years after his first nomination by the SportsBusiness Journal Barnhart was named 2019 Athletic Director of the Year, but he has always been more interested in the achievements of UK student-athletes than his own. On that count, UK has had plenty to celebrate.
 
During a 2018-19 season that saw five teams (men’s soccer, men’s basketball, rifle, volleyball and softball) post top-10 finishes and the football program post its best season in 41 years, Wildcat student-athletes excelled. Softball’s Abbey Cheek was named NFCA National Player of the Year, football’s Josh Allen was named national defensive player of the year and women’s basketball’s Rhyne Howard was named national freshman of the year. Dozens more Wildcats earned All-America and all-conference honors.
 
Off-the-field recognition has come just as often, with softball senior Katie Reed being named the winner of the Senior CLASS Award, C.J. Conrad winning the 2018 Pop Warner National College Football Award, and Asia Seidt honored as 2019 Arthur Ashe Female Sports Scholar of the Year and NCAA Elite 90 winner. Seidt added to UK’s rich history of producing winners of the Elite 90 award – given to the student-athlete with the top GPA at each NCAA championship – following in the footsteps of Chelsea Oswald (track and field, 2012-13), Sam Malone (men’s basketball, 2013-14) and Aldila Sutjiadi (women’s tennis, 2014-15 & 2015-16).
 
Even with UK’s sustained success, Barnhart is always seeking improvement. One recent example is UK’s newly launched Student-Athlete Experience Division. Through the division’s work, UK has renewed its commitment to prepare student-athletes to enter life after UK by equipping them with requisite professional skills and helping them identify and pursue internship and work opportunities while continuing to provide the academic support that has made UK Athletics a trendsetter in college athletics for the last four decades.
 
Investment in the success of UK student-athletes in all facets has been a theme of the Barnhart era, beginning with the provision funds for full coaching staffs and scholarship allotments for all 22 UK sports. Barnhart has also strategically invested in improvements to UK Athletics’ facilities. Investments in new construction and renovation to facilities total approximately $300 million and include the Joe Craft Center; new stadiums for track and field, softball and soccer; the UK Golf House; and the Wildcat Coal Lodge dormitory. The home of Kentucky football, Kroger Field, underwent a $126 million renovation completed in 2015 and the $45 million Joe Craft Football Training Facility opened a year later. A new $49 million baseball stadium – Kentucky Proud Park – opened in fall of 2018 and a new men’s basketball locker room opened in 2017. Next on the docket are upgrades to Memorial Coliseum and the construction of a new indoor tennis facility.
 
Even with the department’s growth and the increasingly competitive nature of college sports, UK Athletics has remained financially self-sufficient under Barnhart’s management, operating with a balanced budget and with the help of no state or University funds. Seeing pressing facility needs on campus as well, Barnhart has made a $65 million commitment for athletics to fund nearly two-thirds of the new Don & Cathy Jacobs Science Building on campus. He also directs an annual $1.7-million contribution to the University’s scholarship program. Millions more dollars from the athletics budget stay on campus each year through athletic scholarship payments, administrative support payments, merchandise royalties and other avenues. Additionally, UK has also completely phased out the athletics fee previously paid by students as part of their tuition.
 
A steadfast believer in the transformational power of college athletics, Barnhart is influential on the national level. Already having served on numerous committees and boards for the NCAA and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA), Barnhart completed his third year as a member of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee in 2019, which brings responsibility for selecting, seeding and bracketing teams, along with administration of the NCAA’s highest-profile event.
 
With his extensive previous experience on the NCAA Division I Council, as chair of the NCAA Competition Oversight Committee and as a member of the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee, in addition to several other leadership groups, Barnhart has proven himself well suited for the task.
 
On a league level, Barnhart – the longest-tenured athletics director in the conference – was named chair of the SEC Athletics Directors in 2017, the latest instance of his active involvement in SEC projects. Of recent note is his work with the SEC Compliance Committee and the SEC Network Content Committee, which helped the highly successful launch of the largest new cable channel in television history.
 
Barnhart’s legacy at UK includes helping develop administrators who have gone on to become athletics directors at nationally prominent universities, including Greg Byrne of Alabama, Mark Coyle at Minnesota, Rob Mullens at Oregon, Scott Stricklin at Florida, John Cohen at Mississippi State and Kevin Saal at Murray State.
 
Barnhart arrived at UK from Oregon State, where he served four successful years (1998-2002) as athletics director. Before OSU, he worked in athletics administration posts at Tennessee (1986-98), Southern Methodist University (1983-86), Oregon (1983) and San Diego State (1982-83).
 
Barnhart is a native of Kansas City, Kansas. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Ottawa University (Kansas) in 1981 and a master’s in sports administration from Ohio University.
 
In addition to the extraordinary achievements of his work world, reaching new heights is also a theme of his personal life. An avid mountain climber, Barnhart has scaled Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, along with two of the most challenging peaks in the United States, Mount Rainier in Washington and the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. He has also twice performed tandem parachute jumps with the Army Golden Knights. Impactful in community service, Barnhart has taken part in mission trips and was on the national advisory board of K-Love Radio.
 
Barnhart and his wife, Connie, also actively serve and support the Christian Student Fellowship and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes on campus in an effort to minister to young people. The Barnharts have three children, Kirby Willoughby, Blaire Jansen and Scott; Kirby’s husband, McKenzie; grandsons, Cooper and Reece; Blaire’s husband, Andrew; and Scott’s wife Cassie.