Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing AL.com series detailing the SEC’s most influential people and schools.
As football-driven as the Southeastern Conference is, Kentucky isn’t usually the first name that comes to mind when considering its most influential school.
Kentucky’s status as the conference’s lone traditional basketball powerhouse has long cast it as an outsider. Incredible success on the football field has defined the SEC in recent years, with LSU winning a national championship last season and Alabama securing titles in 2015 and 2017. It drives the money, too, as most of the $721 million the SEC generated last fiscal year came from bowl payouts, the College Football Playoff and massive TV contracts dependent on football.
Yet, in conversations with athletic directors, agents, coaches and other industry sources, Kentucky kept coming up. The school landed three people on AL.com’s 25 most influential SEC people list, including two in the top 10. Alabama was the only other SEC school to land three on the list.
“One of the reasons we all end up on that list is we’ve been around,” says University of Kentucky president Dr. Eli Capilouto.
Capilouto recently served as the president of the SEC’s presidents and chancellors. Athletic director Mitch Barnhart is chair of the SEC ADs and the NCAA men’s basketball committee. John Calipari, the conference’s most tenured men’s basketball coach, has taken on an important national role in the McLendon Minority Leadership Initiative. Amid tremendous turnover across SEC ranks over the last half-decade, Kentucky has had remarkable continuity in key positions.
As one industry source put it, “Kentucky is the center of the SEC universe.”
It might not stay that way forever. There’s a cyclical nature to these things. Florida dominated the early 2000s with AD Jeremy Foley, football coach Urban Meyer and basketball coach Billy Donovan. Over the last decade, Alabama has dominated the conference, spurring dramatic rises in the hiring of Nick Saban proteges and football staff sizes.
In 2020, though, no SEC school carries as much influence as Kentucky.
“There’s a lot of historical knowledge from a league standpoint,” says Florida AD Scott Stricklin, “and it just so happens a lot of it flows from Kentucky right now.”
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The ‘accidental administrator’
Never has strong leadership been more important in college athletics than in 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced unprecedented actions like the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament and significant budget cuts in schools across the country. Two Power 5 conferences, the Big Ten and Pac-12, canceled their fall football seasons in August only to later reverse course and play shortened schedules.
Dr. Capilouto’s tenure as president of the SEC couldn’t have been better timed. Capilouto, who worked as UAB’s provost and the dean of its School of Public Health before arriving at Kentucky, has a doctorate in health policy and management from Harvard and a master’s in epidemiology. His medical background gave him the necessary knowledge to help his peers consider whether to allow students back on campus and play football this fall. Just how important was that for the SEC? Consider the Big Ten’s situation where two of the university presidents with medical backgrounds (Michigan State’s Samuel Stanley and Michigan’s Mark Schlissel) “carried the day” to postpone the fall season back in August, according to ESPN.
Capilouto isn’t the loudest voice in the room, but amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he was well qualified to explain to his SEC peers what the testing numbers meant and how they should be weighed.
“Those aren’t new numbers to me and I don’t pretend to be an expert in all of those fields, but public health gives you a broad set of disciplines and competencies,” Capilouto says. “I think I know enough to ask the right questions.”
Capilouto’s journey to becoming one of the most influential figures in the SEC has been unexpected. He’s quick to note he’s an “accidental administrator” who was promoted three times at UAB into interim roles without seeking any of them. Leading an institution like Kentucky appealed to him, though, and he jumped at the opportunity to serve as the school’s 12th president.
In the nearly decade since taking over the school, Capilouto’s stature has grown in college athletics. He served as chair of the NCAA Board of Directors and was a member of the powerful 25-person NCAA Board of Governors until August. He had a say in every important decision considered in the lead up to this college football season, both in the SEC and nationally. In AL.com’s SEC influential rankings, Capilouto finished No. 5, the highest-ranking of any SEC’s president or chancellor.
“I’ve been very fortunate since the day I arrived at Kentucky to have an understanding and supportive Board of Trustees,” Capilouto says. “I hope Mitch Barnhart believes he has an understanding and supporting president to work for. That sort of chain of leadership and the principles and culture at the top of an organization I believe are important to filter down throughout the organization.”
He certainly has the support of the most famous man on his campus.
“He needs me to do something, all he has to do is pick up the phone, and I’ll do it,” says Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari. “If he needs me to get on a robocall for students, I’m on it. In the same sense, if I’m recruiting and need him to talk to someone, he makes time.”
The AD with empathy
On July 15, 2002, a blue tie clad Mitch Barnhart walked to a podium and had his introductory press conference as Kentucky’s newest athletics director. He promised to work “tirelessly” to “make this program something you can be extremely proud of.”
In his 18-plus years in Lexington, Barnhart has hired a national championship-winning basketball coach, elevated the football program’s status and pushed Kentucky from a school only known for one sport into a well-rounded athletic department that regularly finishes in the Top 20 of the Learfield Cup. He ranked No. 9 in AL.com’s SEC most influential list.
That success has given Barnhart an unusually long tenure in a conference that has experienced frequent turnover in recent years. Since Barnhart’s first press conference, SEC schools have combined to make 30 AD hires. Missouri and Texas A&M have only been in the conference for eight years yet still have combined to hire five ADs in that stretch.
Three of those 30 hires have direct ties back to Barnhart, too.
Out of all Barnhart’s significant Kentucky accomplishments, his hiring and development track record might be the crowning one. Former Barnhart lieutenants include Alabama AD Greg Byrne, Florida AD Scott Stricklin, Mississippi State AD John Cohen, Oregon AD Rob Mullens and Minnesota AD Mark Coyle. In August, Barnhart’s long-time No. 2 DeWayne Peevy, who was one of AL.com’s top SEC behind-the-scenes power players, became DePaul’s AD.
“Other than the mistake he made hiring me, he’s done a remarkable job identifying young people in their career who could help benefit the athletic department at Oregon State and, for the last 18 years, at Kentucky,” says Alabama AD Greg Byrne. “He’s given them the opportunity to take on responsibility and learn and grow in that role.”
That last part is critical. It’s not merely a good eye for identifying talent, which Barnhart certainly has, but his trust in the people around him and willingness to push their development, whether internally or in league-wide settings. He let his top people make counter-arguments even if he thought he was right -- those who know him best say Barnhart doesn’t have a great poker face, so he didn’t hide that -- to come to the best-informed conclusion. At his core, Barnhart knew what an athletic department should look and act like, something his former deputies have taken with them to their next stops.
“I feel like every day I was on a Ph.D course of study in college athletics,” Stricklin says. “I was learning so much every day because of the people Mitch had there.”
With Barnhart’s long run comes unusual patience in the high-pressure SEC. Barnhart has had to fire coaches before, including basketball coach Billy Gillispie after only two seasons, but he doesn’t have a quick trigger finger. Stricklin remembers trying to talk his boss out of announcing a contract extension for Rich Brooks ahead of an important game against Vanderbilt, knowing it wouldn’t play well with the fanbase. Barnhart did it anyway, and the Wildcats won that week. Capilouto says even when coaches have been unsuccessful, Barnhart has wanted to give them the extra time to have every opportunity to succeed.
It has paid off. Kentucky now has either the SEC’s most tenured or second-most tenured head coaches in men’s basketball and football. Before women’s basketball coach Matt Mitchell retired earlier this month, Kentucky had the most tenured coach in that sport, too. Banner Society recently proclaimed Kentucky the best job in college football.
“I think one of Mitch’s greatest skills is the empathy he has for people,” Byrne says. “You realize when you change coaching staffs that directly impact somebody’s family, that impacts their kids and where they are going to school, that could impact somebody’s ability to retire.
“He’s going to be thoughtful and patient as he goes through that decision-making because of the care he has for other people.”
That thoughtfulness will serve him well this year as the chair of the NCAA men’s basketball committee. It already promises to be a unique year with the NCAA moving the entire tournament to Indianapolis. There will be hard decisions on which teams make the tournament when games inevitably have to be canceled throughout the season. Barnhart has been rewarded with what’s usually a plum assignment in the most challenging year in college sports history.
The dean of the SEC ADs, though, is well suited to turn a challenge into a positive. He won’t make it about himself. Instead, he’ll listen and take into account what everyone else is saying to make the most well-reasoned decisions possible.
“He doesn’t talk just to hear himself talk,” Stricklin says. “He doesn’t talk just because he feels like everybody needs to hear what he has to say. He speaks when he thinks he has something to offer.”
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The trail-blazing coach
In 2019, John Calipari signed a “lifetime” contract with Kentucky. What that means beyond the contract years is up to interpretation.
“Lifetime is until they declare you dead,” Calipari jokes. “At some point, they just say you die, and you’re out.”
Even being at Kentucky, let alone securing a lifetime contract, is something that the Pennsylvania native never expected. He clawed and fought at lower levels, guiding Massachusetts and Memphis to Final Fours, just hoping for a chance to lead a basketball powerhouse like Kentucky one day. He wasn’t sure it would ever happen.
When he finally landed at Kentucky in 2009, it didn’t take long for Calipari to thoroughly shake up the college basketball landscape. He quickly focused his recruiting efforts on signing the best players no matter what, even if they weren’t likely to stay in college long. The focus on “one-and-done” players was a stark contrast to schools like Duke having success doing it the traditional way -- winning big with veteran-laden rosters. Calipari wasn’t sure if even his bosses thought his strategy was a good one.
“They had to question what I was doing with the top athletes and the kids started leaving after a year,” he says. “But they trusted me. They believed in what I was doing after they saw the results...there would have been places that would have said, ‘We don’t want this.’”
Calipari, ranked No. 13 on AL.com’s influential list, paid back their faith in him with a national championship in 2011 and a steady supply of first-round draft picks ever since including two this year. Quite a few of the NBA’s top young stars -- Anthony Davis, Devin Booker, Karl Anthony-Towns, to name three -- came from Calipari’s Kentucky program. After initially eschewing one-and-done talent, schools like Duke have since copied Calipari’s approach and loaded up on top players once he proved it could work.
He’s become one of the sport’s most famous coaches, and used his platform at Kentucky to push causes he’s passionate about. This summer that meant pushing for more minority coaches to be hired. Cal’s success has brought a slew of suitors to his doorstop, all hoping to convince him to leave Kentucky. Some have even inquired about getting him back to the NBA. But after a long journey just to get to where he is now, the 61-year old is happy in Lexington.
“I’ve been at UMASS and Memphis, and you know, (it’s) dog fights and always in places that you wait in line,” he says. “You’re in line, there’s a pecking order. It wasn’t for me about cutting line but I just wanted to start a new line. I got the Kentucky job...and then it’s a different ballgame.”
Calipari is the highest-ranked basketball coach in AL.com’s most influential rankings. Barnhart is the highest-ranked AD, and Capilouto the highest-ranked president, too. In the SEC, football will always be king. It is the dominant source for money, media attention and fan interest. That likely will never change.
But during a COVID-19 influenced 2020, where college football’s status was up in the air and there was no NCAA Tournament, it was the basketball powerhouse located in the SEC East that wielded the most influence.
John Talty is the sports editor and SEC Insider for Alabama Media Group. You can follow him on Twitter @JTalty.