Kentucky Sports Radio
[Moderated by Matt Jones]
[Moderated by Matt Jones]
For those you you who don’t know, I’m in graduate school at UK and one of the courses I’m taking this semester is called International Intelligence. We just basically talk about the CIA, James Bond and waterboarding for two and a half hours every Thursday. What did we do in class this week? Well, our professor went out and found the best guest lecturer on the topic of International Intelligence in Lexington- Mr. Mitch Barnhart.
Now I know what you’re thinking, “Patrick, Mitch Barnhart is an Athletics Director, what could he possibly know about Intelligence matters?” I know. I was skeptical, too. Come to find out, Mitch really doesn’t know anything about International Intelligence but he did say some very interesting things about UK athletics. Allow me to recap.
-Something that shouldn’t be surprising is that football and basketball are the only two revenue producing sports. What I didn’t know is how far all other programs are from being viable. The closest, he said, was Women’s Basketball. “They make about $250,000 a year. But they spend about $1.5mil.“ So next time you hear someone complain about spending $7 million on a dorm or the bucketfulls of cash to pay Coach Cal, just know that by doing so it helps keep all the other programs afloat.
-In football, they employ the Three C’s of recruiting. Character, Commitment and Capacity. The latter, he explained, is a unique situation for the football team. Florida, Georgia, Alabama and others recruit guys that come in and are able to play right away. UK doesn’t have that luxury and have to search for guys with high capacity (read: room for improvement), redshirt those guys to give them time to develop and hope that they’re ready a year removed from high school.
-He and Coach Cal are still going to be discussing the viability of exhibition games. Some reported that Coach doesn’t want to play any more exhibitions, instead wanting to play in closed scrimmages against other D1 teams. But Barnhart said the revenues from those exhibitions are crucial. He also commented on how excited Campbellsville players were to play against UK in Rupp and how it is important for the state to have our smaller schools to have a chance to play the Big Blue.
-”The local media hasn’t figured out that negative doesn’t sell.” He then proceeded to recall the story of exactly when he cancelled his subscription to the local paper.
-Here’s a stat for you. 98.5% of NCAA revenues come from college basketball. And a majority of that from March Madness and the CBS broadcasting rights. Little to no money is made in football because the Bowl games are all privately run.
-He also brought up several good points about NCAA policies that need some adjusting. He said, and he wasn’t speaking on John Wall specifically, that sometimes kids, for whatever reason, just don’t have the money to go on college recruiting visits. So it seems unfair that the NCAA levies penalties on these athletes just because someone helped them get on campuses. Of course, he went into some interesting detail, but I’ll leave that for another day. Or maybe a Live Blog if I’m ever invited back onto one.
At the end of his talk I knew nothing more about spies, conspiracies or who shot JFK than when I entered. But I did leave VERY impressed with Mitch Barnhart. He was way more candid than I had ever anticipated and I ended up learning quite a bit. Now I just need to finally peel that “Ditch Mitch and Rich” bumper sticker off the back of my car. I’d say it’s time, right?
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November 6th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
(1) compromise on the exhibition game issue. do one scrimmage and one exh. it’s that easy.
(2) had never thought about the bowl game dynamic. that’s an overwhelming statistic.
(3) gotta love that Mitch lets it be known that he cancelled his LHL subscription hahahaha
November 6th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Hey Patrick forget James Bond. Check out the BBC series Spooks (also called MI5 in the states).
November 6th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Interesting side of NCAA funding that I didn’t know.
November 6th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
hey look, no rob bromly
November 6th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
So if 98.5% of NCAA revenue comes from basketball, Were does the money go from ,for example, the UT football games that have 100,000 or so fans every game?
November 6th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
How can the NCAA sit back and let the bowl outfits run the show? Not only would it be better for the sport to have a playoff, but evidently it would be better for the NCAA to take in that revenue.
November 6th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Did you guys hear my “shout out” to KSR from Paducah on the call in show???
November 6th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Patrick, are you at the Patterson school?
November 6th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
The 98.5% number is not possible.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
No way. The NCAA gets 90% of its revenue from television and marketing rights fees from football & basketball combined.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
5- That’s not NCAA money, that goes to UT. All of the SEC schools will be getting 4-5 million(maybe more) this year from having 2 teams in BCS bowls. The real question is, with the NCAA so incompetent, if they even deserve to make that much money anyway? NCAA tourney is really their only money maker, tickets, tv deals, etc.
Mitch was a little bit off on the other sports which are closest to being viable, other sports that make no money spend a lot less than women’s basketball.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Mitch is an idiot and, if he didn’t have negatives of Clueless Lee, he wouldn’t have a job. He’s a sorry excuse for an NCAA AD.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
After 4 beers I looked at this picture of Mitch I started thinking he looks like Tony Romo.
November 7th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
12)Mitch has UK Football in its best run of bowl games ever. He made a bad hire in BCG, but did more than enough to correct it with Cal. What more do you want from the guy? The football program will never be consistently better than it is now, and the basketball program is at least close to being completely back.
But some people are douches and simply can’t change their mind on things.
November 8th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
13 - Holy crap, he does look like Romo. Nice call.