Mitch Barnhart on Kentucky to the Belk Bowl

Mitch Barnhart

MITCH BARNHART: I appreciate everybody coming on a Sunday night again. And we're excited to announce we have accepted an invitation to the Belk Bowl in Charlotte. Had a chance to visit with the executive director Danny Morrison this afternoon. And Danny, he and I have talked on a couple of occasions, and he's been at a couple of our games, so we're excited to spend some time with him. He's a good man that's really worked hard to put on a good bowl.Had a chance to chat with a couple other folks that have been to the bowl, and they say it's just a wonderful experience. I'm looking forward to sharing that with our coaches and our team and our fans. So it will be really good.It's our first time playing in this game. And we know that they create an experience that is uniquely different than some of the other bowls we have been to, which I think will be exciting for our players. We can't wait to get to Charlotte and compete against Virginia Tech. Obviously, (Virginia Tech is) a program that's had a lot of success and done a lot of really good things. Whit Babcock will bring their team, as athletic director. I've known Whit a long time, and their team will come down and be well prepared. And, a lot of history with their program, obviously, an ACC opponent. That's always good when you can match up against another Power Five, Autonomy Five school and have a chance to compete. So it's a great opportunity.Bowls have become a little bit of a regular thing under Coach (Mark) Stoops' era. We're appreciative of being four years in a row now and an exciting time for us to just continue to take a step in our program. And (with a record of) 7-5, to go have a chance to get our 8th win is exciting. Don't want it take that lightly. I think that you get, sometimes we get a little bit nonchalant about the things the that happen, the successes we have in our program, and don't want to do that. The things that this team has accomplished this year took an incredible amount of work from a lot of people. There was a lot of injuries, a lot of things to overcome. And this team did a remarkable job of staying together, working hard together, changing the way they play, the personality of who they were, and found a way to get to a really remarkable spot in winning five of our last seven games to close the regular season. So I don't want to forget about that. I also don't want to forget about the incredible role that our fans played. The weather had an incredible impact on our year. It was an interesting year from a weather perspective. Short of my days in Oregon, I don't ever remember a seeing as much rain as I saw in one football season. So to play in that and to overcome some of that time after time after time was pretty remarkable what our young people did. And so really happy that they get to take it one more step and for our seniors to have an opportunity to go to bowl game again and walk out in post-season play. And I think that's a remarkable deal.But make no mistake about it. The bowls are important to college football and it's important to the growth of our program and to us being able to continue to be consistent in building the foundational piece to our program and building the opportunity for us to continue to climb up the mountain of things we want to do towards championships in the SEC.The other thing I would say is people have become accustomed to the crowds that our fans bring, our fan base brings. You look at the last three bowl games we have been to, we had an opportunity to go to the Gator Bowl, we've had a chance to be in the Music City Bowl, we've had an opportunity to be in the Citrus Bowl. We have been in some really good bowl games and our fans have absolutely supported us. And we're going to need that kind of support as we go to Charlotte. I know that Virginia Tech will have a strong fan base there. I would anticipate our fan base will support us. It's drivable. We can get there in a good spot from Kentucky. We have a large fan base and alumni association base in Atlanta. It's one of the largest we've got in the country. I'm hoping they will drive up the highway from there and have an opportunity to get to that spot.Our tickets will go on sale tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock on ukfootballtix -- that's T I X -- .com. So everybody that wants to have an opportunity to get into that. We have* had the presale that went on for our fan base, and then a lot of people wait to find out where we're going and what's going on with that. And so now we encourage them to jump in on that so we can get moving along.But, again, the game is another step forward toward trying to build a championship-caliber program. And you build championships one bowl at a time and one step at a time. And so this is another step for our program and looking forward to doing just that. It’s a national audience on December 31st at noon, a day that everybody sort of settles in and begins to watch a couple full days of football and we're anxious to be a part of that. So, anxious to represent the Southeastern Conference, and hopefully add another victory to a very storied history of bowls in the SEC.So let me stop there and take questions that you might have and then get the guys you want to talk to about the game up here and what they have to say about Virginia Tech and the bowl.

Q. Obviously, there was a lot of speculation today about the Gator Bowl. At what point today did you realize the Belk Bowl was going to be an option and was that y'all's preference?

MITCH BARNHART: I think the two things that you can get really misguided in these things, if you're not appreciative for wherever you go, all right? You can't get into these things and think that unless you're undefeated you own the day. And sometimes when you're undefeated you don't get to own the day. So at the end of the day we'll always be appreciative of where we go. We knew that there was two or three options available. And, basically, two options available to us depending on how many teams got up in the bowl situation. And we knew that in terms of order of choices and how people pick bowls that there was two, about two places that we were going to get to go. There was also a non-repeat rule in our league -- two-year, they try and keep people from repeating within a two-year period of time going back to those bowls unless it's absolutely necessary. So we knew that that sort of narrowed the field a little bit. And then there's a geographical piece and where will your fans go and those kind of things. So I knew that we would get a phone call mid-afternoon after the rankings came out and they would say that hey, this is where it's sort of landed, and we would probably, there would probably be not a lot of room in that and that's okay. We haven't been to Charlotte before. We're excited about it. I think I'll let these guys speak for it, but new experiences are good. We have been to the Music City Bowl several times and that's a good thing. We, obviously, couldn't go back there because of the two-year window, and that's okay.The Gator Bowl was much talked about and there was that conversation. Then you get into opponents and things like that that happen, and then you talk about the Belk Bowl. And this is a bowl that has been good to our league. It has been supportive of the SEC. It's not even really in the SEC footprint, so to speak. It's out of our footprint. And so for them to jump into our footprint and be supportive of our league with the ACC, it's a really good matchup for us against a really good opponent. So I'm excited for our players to get to experience something new. I'm excited that our fans can get there fairly easily. You know, it's a six-hour trip from Lexington. And so I think there's a lot of moving pieces to these things and they're really hard. The SEC staff has a really difficult job of trying to match all this stuff up and make it work together. And I think they do a remarkable job year-in and year-out. Mark Womack does a tremendous job of trying to do that. And so I thank him for all of his efforts and what he does year in and year out for college football. I mean, it's a really difficult task. At the end of the day, we're ready to play and ready to go to Charlotte. So I hope that answers the question.

Q. You mentioned the alumni in Atlanta. It's, like, a four-hour trip and how appreciative would you be or are you that they have that opportunity, you mentioned that, and how important is it that they make that trip?

MITCH BARNHART: Yeah, very important. You don't get a chance to watch our football team a lot of times unless you're driving up -- when you're in Atlanta, you get the game at Georgia, maybe sometimes a game across the line at Auburn or Alabama, sometimes. Very few times we get to play over there. So having an opportunity to drive just a little bit up. It's in late December, clearly end of the year. Most folks have that day to sort of gather their relaxation for the New Year's or whatever and so hopefully they will jump in the car and take a day and drive up that morning and come up and watch us play. We're excited that that would be good for our fan base. We always talk about Catlanta, but that group has traveled remarkably well. We had a bunch come down to Jacksonville when we played a couple years ago. They came to the Citrus Bowl when we played last year. And they've traveled to follow us very, very well, so I'm assuming that group in Atlanta will travel extremely well to come up the highway to watch us.