{"id":776412,"date":"2026-05-06T03:53:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/776412\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T03:53:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:53:16","slug":"kentucky-is-considering-splitting-ad-role-after-eli-capiloutos-listening-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/776412\/","title":{"rendered":"Kentucky is considering splitting AD role after Eli Capilouto’s listening tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kentucky\u2019s long search for a new athletic director is ongoing. University president Eli Capilouto<\/strong> is on a listening tour. A hire is expected before the next school year begins. We still do not know much about the search but there appear to be options on the table.<\/p>\n

Could Kentucky hire separate athletic directors to split the job? One would focus on the business side which would include fundraising and managing money. The other would focus on the athletics side which would include hiring and managing coaches and other tradition athletic director duties. UK is currently looking into that option.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this new environment, the organizational structure may have to change,\u201d UK president Eli Capilouto told the Champions Blue board of governors at its meeting last week<\/a>. \u201cWe have an incredible team, and they will continue to do great work, but we must examine what other organizational and structural models \u2014 many of those you\u2019ll find similarities in business, professional sports and other entities \u2014 are necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest meeting between university leadership included a 31-page pdf document obtained by Lexington Herald-Leader\u2019s Jon Hale<\/a>. In this packet there are four proposed organizational models that came from Capilouto\u2019s listening tour. These were presented to the Champions Blue board. That nonprofit LLC created to manage\/supervise the athletic department got to go over the proposals created by consulting firm Deloitte in the latest meeting. Deloitte might sound familiar since that is the firm that created \u201cNIL Go\u201d for the College Sports Commission (CSC) that reviews and clears third-party NIL deals.<\/p>\n

This presentation included a House settlement overview, a rundown of the CSC and NIL Go, why the SEC and Kentucky are against Saving College Sports<\/a> initiative that wants to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act to allow conferences to pool media rights, why college athletics is at a tipping point, and what other universities are doing to outside the box to enhance revenue. Boise State\u2019s BroncoPRO NIL entity was used as an example. KSR+ recently reported that Boise State director of athletics Jeremiah Dickey is a candidate for the open UK athletic director gig<\/a>. Then the four leadership models were presented.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Multiple models include a chief officer working alongside the athletic director. Capilouto is currently undecided on what will be the path when Barnhart retries on June 30. A temporary plan could be put into place while the university and Champions Blue figure out what path to take.<\/p>\n

The listening tour that Big Blue Nation has heard about constantly has come up with four separate options. Some could take some power away from the athletic director and implement a cutting edge two-person leadership structure to help address some of the financial concerns that loom large for every athletic department in college sports.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t sound like the athletic director search will end anytime soon, but Kentucky is looking at some outside the box options to maximize department efficiency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kentucky\u2019s long search for a new athletic director is ongoing. University president Eli Capilouto is on a listening…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":776413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-776412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116525610462830543","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}