Mark Pope voiced his support for Kentucky's current NIL partnership with JMI

Pope says his program has a 'ridiculous' amount of support from partners, but acknowledges it's still his responsibility.

Dec 9, 2025; Lexington, Kentucky, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach Mark Pope talks to his players from the sideline during the first half against the North Carolina Central Eagles at Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center. Mandatory Credit: Jordan Prather-Imagn Images | Jordan Prather-Imagn Images

Kentucky's partnership with JMI has gotten a lot of pushback lately, and it's due to multiple factors. One, the basketball program has yet to sign anyone at all in the 2026 class, while other schools have landed multiple, and the options and time is starting to dwindle. Not only that, but it's clear at this point Kentucky overpaid for this year's roster, which is valued at $22M. That is more than any other school, but the results on the court have not validated that at all 10 games in.

These results have led to Kentucky's NIL partnership with JMI being a big talking point aming Kentucky fans on social media that even led to KSR doing a deep dive on why Kentucky hasn't been able to close deals with recruits, with some fault landing on Pope, and plenty on JMI, as they sign away deals that no other school has recruits do. It's something Kentucky has tried to be innovative on as the first one-of-a-kind approach, but it has backfired so far.

Mark Pope was asked in his press conference on Friday about Kentucky's partnership with JMI. Pope says the support from the company and AD Mitch Barnhart through this process has been really good, especially praising how Barnhart has handled things.

"We have this incredible partnership with JMI that's enabled us to do so much, and they're doing incredible work for us. And the way Mitch has kind of worked this and led this is, in a sense -- I have a whole team of people that are working contracts, working possibilities. One of the complicated things right now is that there's not a clear interpretation of exactly what the rules are. Literally, it's a dynamic process every single day. And we'll make sure that we always air on the side of doing this legal, which is a guessing game, because nobody knows exactly what's legal right now. ...This would probably be like when someone needs to do like a super in-depth, you know, New Yorker magazine 30-page article on Mitch, but his leadership in this space has been incredible, and I get to see it firsthand, where I have AD's from other major universities reaching out and trying to figure out, how are you doing this? How did you move ahead this way? This partnership with JMI is incredible."

Could Kentucky put someone in charge that knows the ins-and-outs of how to manage all of the deals and contracts that come in this day and age of college basketball? "There's just a million different parts of this, but that's all in the conversation of how we do the management part of this program and it's something that we we've spent an inordinate amount of time talking about, actually had long, long discussions with a bunch of people that could, at some point, maybe in some way, fill a position like that."

Ultimately, Pope understands that is his job to put Kentucky in a position to be successful as a program, and he says the support from Mitch and JMI has been at a 'ridiculous' level. "We have an incredible team in the dynamic times. Finding, landing on exactly the right spot is ultimately, that's my job, to get the right spot. But the support that we're getting is ridiculous from Mitch and the administration from JMI."

Pope certainly had some strong praise to say about Kentucky's major NIL partner, but he knows things ultimately fall on him as they still try to navigate and play by the rules. Based on their struggles to close deals with recruits, and their uniqueness with how they go about those deals, it's clear they still have some things to figure out, but Pope is confident, and he's got plenty of support from his partners.