OUR skepticism over Mitch Barnhart's appointment as the University of Kentucky athletics director seems increasingly well-founded. We initially doubted whether he could come up with a new and better way of doing business. In fact, his performance has proven uniquely bad.
What other light in the Kentucky firmament has faded so quickly? UK President Lee Todd, to whom Mr. Barnhart answers, hoped he would shine. Who would have guessed it would be as a white dwarf, a star that has run out of fuel?
In six short months, Mr. Barnhart has managed to unify two opposing camps of UK supporters.
The win-at-allcost types think he's failed by missing two chances: first, to keep the popular and successful Guy Morriss as football coach and, second, to hire the well-qualified Doug Williams, who led legendary Grambling to its third straight conference title this season. Instead, Mr. Barnhart hired an unemployed fellow, with a career losing record, with whom he had worked at the University of Oregon. Fairly or not, the cozy result made the prolonged search look more like a sham.
The more cynical of the boosters consider the failure to hire Mr. Williams a wasted chance for insurance against race-based criticism, should basketball coach Tubby Smith decide to go elsewhere. Others simply lament the lost opportunity for UK to break the race barrier among Southeastern Conference football coaches.
The other group of UK backers, those whose first priority is a clean program, were also appalled by Mr. Barnhart, be-cause he didn't do a thorough background search and/or didn't tell UK's president about NCAA violations in the background of the man he did hire.
In a subsequent interview, Mr. Barnhart made matters worse by (1) offering an im-plausible version of his failure to recall details of Oregon's NCAA problems, (2) calling the failure to fully inform Dr. Todd ``a very slight error,'' and (3) inserting a lachrymose story about his family's being victimized by the reaction to his self-imposed troubles.
Meanwhile, he has even angered legislators by deciding the state song is too slow and sappy to sing before football and basketball games.
A white dwarf is especially dense, and in the last stage of its existence as a star.
Mitch Barnhart
Copyright (c) The Courier-Journal. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Gannett Co., Inc. by NewsBank, inc.
Record Number: lou2003011012334442
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