LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Mitch Barnhart gets my vote as the finest athletic director to serve the University of Kentucky.
More successful across the board than C. M. Newton. More ambitious than Cliff Hagan. Made the Wildcats serious about football. Upgraded multiple programs. Fine-tuned and constructed more facilities.
Raised more money. Sold more tickets. Positioned UK to thrive in the new world of high-octane college athletics running the program the way it needed to be run — like a business.
Barnhart also gets my vote as one of the top 10 athletic directors in the game. He has the plaques to prove it. His proteges are running athletic departments across the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences.
He is respected across the profession for the work he did as the chairman of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament selection committee during the daunting days of the 2021 COVID-19 restrictions.
But now there is something else to hang on Barnhart's significant list of achievements: a full-sized, bold-faced asterisk.
For all the glory Barnhart has brought to Lexington, he also contributed to the major muck of the last week.
Kentucky football earned two years of NCAA probation and had 10 victories wiped from its 2021 record because 11 players were paid for work they did not perform in 2021 and 2022.
That's embarrassing. Not surprising. But embarrassing.
Kentucky swimming also earned probation because athletes were not given their required days off and exceeded practice hours for three years. Athletic sweat shop behavior.
This was the swimming program run by former head coach Lars Jorgensen, who resigned last year surrounded by allegations of sexual assault. The same coach that the Kentucky athletic department was reportedly warned about by a person described as a "college swimming veteran,' according to a story by the Lexington Herald-Leader.
That story has considerably bigger stakes than the wink and a nod of NCAA probation. That story is part of a federal Title IX lawsuit that will result in the kind of investigation the NCAA cannot deliver. There will be sworn depositions and testimonies under oath.
There will be no yada yada yada talk to an NCAA investigator. It won't be the kind of story you push into a Friday news dump and then not discuss.
Barnhart and UK President Dr. Eli Capilouto won't be able to no comment their way through that one.
According to informed sources, Barnhart and Capilouto are receiving physical therapy for the shoulder injuries they suffered while patting themselves on the back for the way the university handled the "pay for not working" scandal with the football players.
The system worked, they claimed. UK self-reported the violations. It worked closely with the NCAA.
Nobody in the football program or athletic department had a role in organizing the scam against the health system, which was coming out of the pandemic and always deals with diminished resources.
That could be true.
What is also true is this: Do you think it would have required months to squash this scam if football players were skipping weight room sessions or training table? How about a blown-off video review session?
No, it would have required hours. Maybe minutes.
If that's the system working, I'd recommend a new system. The "We Knew Nothing," strategy comes from an dusty college sports playbook — and it usually works.
I'll put that one in the same file as $1,000 accidentally showing up in an express mail envelope to a UK basketball recruit or the legendary stories about UK athletes getting paid to play pick-up basketball at horse farms for summer employment.
NIL before there was NIL. The UK Health Care System can exhale. There's no need to fake it to make it any more.
But the swimming story remains the story that can leave a significant stain on Barnhart's tenure. Some of his best work at Kentucky has been improving the performance of the UK baseball, softball, soccer and swimming programs.
Hiring Jorgensen was a significant blunder. If the final outcome of the Title IX lawsuit is a determination that UK was deliberately indifferent to warnings about Jorgensen's behavior, that could be a career ender for Barnhart.
The last week has already been a major asterisk on what had been a solid 22-year career.
Related Stories:
- Kentucky agrees to probation, vacates all 2021 football wins for NCAA violations
- UK says it was unaware of 'most serious' sex abuse allegations against former swim coach
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