Wins and losses define a coach’s success. That also applies to the person who hired them. Mitch Barnhart inherited a mess when he arrived at Kentucky. After almost 25 years, Barnhard can boast that he hired some of the greatest coaches to ever wear blue and white.
Mitch Barnhart arrived in Lexington in July of 2002. Just six months prior, the NCAA placed the Kentucky football program on probation. The football team was banned from postseason play in 2002, and the program suffered a reduction in scholarships over three seasons. To dig out of that hole, it would require patience, and those early lessons set the tone for Barnhart’s lengthy tenure.
Ditch Mitch and Rich
Not only did Barnhart have a football program on probation, but within six months, he was looking for a new football coach. Guy Morriss guided Kentucky to a 7-win season, yet when his alma mater called, he left the constraints of probation to coach Baylor. Finding someone willing to rebuild the program was not easy.
Barnhart initially sought counsel from Rich Brooks. The two worked together at Oregon in the 80s. Brooks offered a sounding board for Barnhart as the new athletic director worked through candidates. He swung for the fences and nearly got Bill Parcells to Lexington, until Jerry Jones called the Super Bowl Champion. Barnhart vetted nine other candidates before returning to Brooks, who was eager to get back into coaching.
The man who built the Oregon football program did not immediately revitalize the Kentucky football program. Kentucky won nine games over Brooks’ first three years in Lexington, with a home loss to Ohio serving as the low point. “Ditch Mitch and Rich” became a popular slogan for disgruntled Kentucky fans who plastered it on bumper stickers across town.
During that time, a close family friend wrote Barnhart a personal message sharing his grievances with the decision. Barnhart responded in kind, asking to give it some time. He was confident Brooks was the right man for the job. He proved to be correct.
A 49-0 loss at LSU served as the turning point for the program. Two weeks later, fans ripped down the goalposts after the Wildcats upset Georgia. Kentucky won four of its last five games in the 2006 season, punching a ticket to the Music City Bowl, a 28-20 win over Clemson. It was Kentucky’s first win in a bowl game since 1984.
The 2006 season kicked off a four-year run where Brooks won 30 games and three straight bowls, the most successful Kentucky football run in a generation. During that time, my family friend wrote back to Barnhart, apologizing for his impatience. Mitch replied by thanking him for his support during all of the ups and downs.
The Brooks era set a new high bar for the program. Many fans thought that was as good as it could get. Mark Stoops proved them wrong.
Barnhart tried to keep the good times rolling from the Brooks era by naming Joker Phillips the coach-in-waiting. It was a popular strategy in college athletics at the time. As teams like Oklahoma tried to pull the former Cat away from Lexington, Barnhart stepped in and assured Phillips would get the keys to the program once Brooks retired. The experiment quickly went off the rails.
Barnhart pivoted from offensive-minded coaches and brought a familiar name to Lexington in 2013. Mark Stoops built a defense at Florida State that eventually won a National Championship, and he had a plan to invade his home state of Ohio to improve the talent on Kentucky’s roster. Once again, results did not quickly follow, but the long-term plan paid off, once again, in year four.
Tensions were high around Big Blue Nation during the 2016 season, especially after it opened with a loss to Southern Miss, where the Cats blew a 35-10 lead. Kentucky squeaked out two must-win games at home against South Carolina and Mississippi State, then capped off the season by upsetting Louisville with Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Lamar Jackson under center to punch a ticket to the Gator Bowl.
“The administration here has been phenomenal, and it’s not made me panic, cut corners or do things the wrong way like a lot of people do and shoot for the quick fixes because everybody gets a quick trigger by Year 3,” Stoops said in the middle of the 2018 campaign.
“I wasn’t interested in this place if everybody thought it was going to be a quick fix because I knew it wasn’t going to be. You don’t turn Kentucky around by getting a few players and then all of a sudden win in this league. The people in charge have been extremely helpful in this process and have given me the support to do it the right way, and they’ve believed in what they’ve seen.”
Starting in 2016, Kentucky went to eight straight bowl games. The Wildcats had a pair of 10-win seasons in 2018 and 2021, something that had not happened in 41 years. Benny Snell broke the school’s all-time rushing record, Josh Allen was the College Football Defensive Player of the Year, and in 2022, Stoops surpassed Bear Bryant as the program’s all-time wins leader. Once again, Barnhart’s patience paid dividends.
No Patience Needed with John Calipari
The one great outlier from Barnhart’s hires is arguably the best he ever made. John Calipari arrived in Lexington in 2009 and quickly assembled one of the top teams in the country. In year two, the Wildcats were in the Final Four, followed by a National Championship in 2012.
It was controversial at the time, but Barnhart gave Calipari the green light to do what he did best: acquire talent. The One-and-Done strategy was criticized nationally and locally, yet the Cats were unfazed until the Championship silenced those skeptics. Kentucky basketball was the coolest program in the sport, and had plenty of success to boot, with four Final Fours in five years, culminating with a 2015 season that was two wins away from an undefeated 40-0 campaign.
While the first from the early years eventually waned to a flicker in its final days, Calipari ended his career with 370 wins, second only to Adolph Rupp in Kentucky basketball history. In addition to his Final Fours and the 2012 National Championship, Calipari brought six SEC Regular Season and six SEC Tournament Titles back to Lexington.
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Barnhart Transformed Women’s Sports
Obviously, men’s basketball and football take up most of the oxygen when discussing UK Athletics, but Barnhart also had an eye for talent in non-revenue sports. He hired coaches who won championships and sold out venues, particularly in women’s sports.
In 2007, Barnhart hired Matthew Mitchell to lead the Kentucky women’s basketball program. He took the Cats to three Elite Eights in four years and won the SEC in 2012. With 303 wins, Mitchell holds the record for the most victories in program history. His successor did not continue that momentum, but Kyra Elzy did bring home the program’s second SEC Tournament Title in 2022. Barnhart recruited Kenny Brooks to Kentucky in 2024, who is off to the best start in program history, winning 40 games in his first 50 contests.
Around the same time Barnhart hired Mitchell, he tasked Rachel Lawson to lead the UK Softball program. Like so many other coaches we’ve already mentioned, she’s the winningest coach in program history. Kentucky has made the NCAA Tournament every year since 2009. The Wildcats have appeared in eight Super Regionals, and advanced to the Women’s College World Series in 2014.
Craig Skinner took the Kentucky volleyball team even further. The Wildcats have dominated the SEC, winning nine consecutive conference titles. Kentucky won the National Championship in 2020, a first for an SEC program, and reached the National Championship Game this past fall.
Oh, and Barnhart built the Kentucky track team into an Olympic farm system. My unofficial count is six NCAA Individual National Championships and 29 SEC Championships, but that may be a few short. Keni Harrison won an Olympic silver medal, and Jasamine Camacho-Quinn won a gold and a bronze, before Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone became Team USA’s biggest track star, winning a pair of gold medals in each of the last two Olympics.
One More Barnhart Success Story
At many SEC schools, baseball is second only to football in popularity. That has never been the case at Kentucky. The baseball program was an afterthought that did not consistently draw large crowds to Cliff Hagan Stadium. That slowly changed under Barnhart’s guidance.
Nick Mingione took over the program in 2017 and had the best run in program history, taking the Bat Cats to the Super Regional for the first time. Barnhart began organizing plans to construct a new state-of-the-art facility, Kentucky Proud Park. Unfortunately, the momentum on the field was not maintained.
Two years after reaching a Super Regional, Kentucky only won seven SEC games. After four seasons without an NCAA Tournament appearance, pressure was mounting to move on from Mingione. Mitch Barnhart did not give in to the pressure. He rolled the dice and bet on his guy. The gamble worked.
In 2023, Kentucky returned to the Super Regionals. The Bat Cats followed that up by winning the SEC and advancing the College World Series for the first time in program history.
Throughout his 24 years in Lexington, you didn’t have to look far to find a Mitch Barnhart critic. In addition to his successful hires, he had a few whiffs, and even those success stories ended awkwardly, thanks to long-term contracts, which put Kentucky in a bind. He’s not without faults, but even when he was questioned, Barnhart stuck to his principles, and it ultimately took the UK Athletics department to new heights.