Mitch Barnhart and Mark Stoops think playing eight SEC games each year is enough. (UK Athletics Photo)
Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart has made it clear that UK prefers to keep an eight-game SEC football schedule when Texas and Oklahoma join the conference in 2025 and how a nine-game SEC schedule could impact Kentucky’s revenue.
“Everybody will say, ‘There’s probably more money in television,’” Barnhart said on the weekly radio show Big Blue Nation. “There could be. There might not be, and on those years when we give up, if there is nine (SEC games) and we have to go on the road five times for conference play, that makes it incredibly difficult to schedule the rest of those games at home and make sure that we’ve got the balance that allows our program to have some financial success to keep the rest our programs (financially stable).”
Barnhart noted that football and men’s basketball “feed the other 21 (sports)” at Kentucky and must continue to create revenue to fund those sports.
“As much as we’d like to think they (other sports) can stand on their own, they can’t do it,” Barnhart said.
The Kentucky AD says deciding what scheduling model is best for football — or even men’s and women’s basketball.
“Do you have a permanent opponent, do you have two permanent opponents (in football)? So what is best? You’re going to have to go through that same conversation in basketball as well, on the men’s side and the women’s side. If you have a permanent opponent on that side, who wants that team?” Barnhart said.
“I think that fairness and equity are always in the eyes of the beholder and what I think is equitable and fair is probably not what others think is equitable and fair. Everyone’s going to have to give a little bit and find balance in the conversation.”
