Mitch Barnhart on perception and football commitment | John Clay's ...

After the Mark Stoops press conference today at the Nutter Field House, UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart was asked about the perception that the school does not do enough to support football, and where that might be rooted. Here?s what he said:

?I think it?s not rooted in anything. I think it?s just because the stadium, people see things going on at other stadiums in our league and they automatically say, ?Well, they haven?t done anything at Commonwealth since 1999, they obviously don?t care about it.? Well, that?s not true. We do care about it, but there?s certain things that we don?t need. But there are certain things we do need. What are those things? The fan ementities that make it a little better and dress it up a little bit.

?It?s funny, one of the schools, and I won?t tell you which one, came into our stadium this year and they?re senior associate AD goes, ?I always love coming to this stadium. It?s the cleanest, coolest stadium we play in all year long.? He goes to all of them, for pete?s sake. It?s not a bad place. He goes, ?The field is always perfect. The fans are tremendous.? He was very complimentary of it. I don?t hear that very often.

?But the perception is, because we haven?t done anything with the outside or we haven?t done anything with the club seats or with the press box for you guys ? just kidding, a joke ? that we don?t care. And that?s not true. That?s untrue.

?We invested $8 million in scoreboards that sort of just went right over everybody?s heads. It was like, ?Next thing.? The reality is we have got to do some things to fix that up and make everybody feel like that?s a part of it, although again at the end of the day I don?t think Mark would sit here and say, ?That?s the winning edge for us.? I know that?s the case, I talked to him and that wasn?t the conversation. The winning edge for us is not a brand new facility. Would it help? Absolutely. That helps, you can go out and sell that in recruiting. But at the end of the day, he?s got a lot of what he needs to be successful already. It is about people, it is about relationships, it is about making sure you have the proper resources. And we?re fine in that.

?People count money differently in terms of budgets. There are schools in our league that will throw everything from a training room, everything from academics, and they get to this massively cool number. We don?t do your accounting that way so it looks a little bit different for us. Having said that, one of the things I asked Joker (Phillips) on when he left, I said, ?Joker is there anything that we failed to provide?? And he said, ?No. I had everything I needed to be successful.? Now whether he?s saying that to be nice to me, I hope not. I was hoping he was truthful, and I think he was. He and I had a very candid conversation. I think we?re good enough friends that he would have said something otherwise to me if that was different.?

Source: http://johnclay.bloginky.com/2012/12/02/mitch-barnhart-on-perception-and-football-commitment/

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