UK Athletics Might Buy Private Plane

Apr. 28 -- Long lines at airports, flight delays and cancellations are just some of the headaches experienced by coaches on the recruiting trail.

Kentucky is trying to relieve some of that strain for Coach Billy Gillispie by increasing the men's basketball recruiting budget by $300,000 this year.

That sum was part of the $62.7 million budget approved yesterday by the UK athletics board -- up from the $62.4 million budget this fiscal year.

"We're examining the ability to get around privately," Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart explained after the meeting. "We've found in the last 21/2 weeks, trying to ramp up quickly with a new coach, how difficult it's been for him to get around."

The athletics director said Gillispie did not request the additional funding.

The request opened up a recurring discussion on the board about UK purchasing its own plane for coaches to use on the recruiting trail.

"We don't have our own plane and that becomes problematic for us in a lot of our major sports," Barnhart said.

Not having a private university plane can slow the process, Barnhart said.

"It changes the way you can recruit," he said, "if you can be in three and four cities in one day versus commercially where you can get to one, if you're lucky, two."

In the past, UK has had to rely on commercial flights and people donating use of private planes to get coaches around, but Barnhart said the school can't continue to count on that.

Kentucky is looking into its options, said Rob Mullens, deputy director of athletics. It's not unprecedented for university athletic programs to own their own planes, he added.

"Almost every one of our peer institutions in our league have at least one and a lot have two for the athletic department," he said.

Southeastern Conference schools Alabama, Florida and Tennessee all confirmed last night that they have university-owned planes to which their coaches have access.

State rival Louisville of the Big East said it did not.

Board member Bill Gatton said he wants the athletics department to look into creating a new foundation to generate more money for the program and perhaps buy a plane for the coaches to use.

"You look at that expense for recruiting -- 300,000 more dollars a year -- you can damn near buy an airplane for that," he said. "You're going to have to look at things like that. ... I truly think we need to step this up."

He said there's no excuse for coaches missing out on certain recruits because other coaches at other schools could get there first.

"Sometimes these coaches can't get a flight," he said. "If they've got to see a kid on such-and-such a day and such-and-such a time, they can't get stuck in an airport, they've got to be there."

The total budget for the men's basketball program next year is $6.85 million, compared with a projected $7.47 million for this year.

More on messaging

One of the first things athletics officials noted about Gillispie when he was hired was his text messaging prowess, saying the new coach averaged 8,000 texts a month to recruits.

On Thursday, the NCAA said coaches like Gillispie will have to get their thumb workouts in another way, by banning that form of communication with recruits.

Barnhart thinks the decision should be revisited.

"We may not have done all of our homework on this one," he said. "We may need to go back and think our way through it a little differently."

The AD said he could see both sides of the argument, but he said the NCAA will need to look at legislation that meets somewhere in the middle.

"Maybe it comes back to some kind of happy medium," he said.

"We're unrealistic to think we can control text messaging," he continued. "Depending on the phone you have, the kind of service you have, the differentiation between text messages and e-mails can be difficult to overcome."

Other items of note

One of the line items in this year's budget is $150,000 in repairs at Commonwealth Stadium, Mullens said.

"We're protecting our asset by sealing, making sure water doesn't pool up in certain places, dripping on people's heads, those types of things," he said.

An additional $50,000 was set aside to repair the diving tower at Lancaster Aquatics Center.

-- Hoping to build on its 2006 success, UK has allotted $200,000 more in its budget to market the football program.

-- The board approved the hiring of new women's basketball coach Matthew Mitchell. The women also received an additional $10,000 to their recruiting budget.

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