Athletic director Mitch Barnhart has made several steps in improving UK’s sustainability on and off the field.

But Monday’s announcement of the university’s agreement with JMI Sports, along with Wednesday’s announcement of the university’s trademark agreement with Fermata Partners, shows that his ability to adapt will ensure UK Athletics’ health as college athletics heads to an uncertain time.

These deals come during the NCAA’s trial against Ed O’Bannon where O’Bannon’s end-game is certain — paying college athletes more than the simple stipend it gets each weekend it plays and the scholarship each athlete earns.

Both deals will help UK Athletics’ revenue go up along with its preparedness for what is to come.

Barnhart was asked in Monday’s news conference about any connection the deal with JMI had to the NCAA’s legal issues.

“I think that our goal is just to keep our nose to the grindstone in terms of what we know we do,” Barnhart replied. “There’s decisions that are being made in different spots, whether that’s the legal system or the NCAA system, that we’ll have to adjust and adapt to.”

It seems that UK has already started to adjust and adapt.

Barnhart said a goal of the new multimedia deal was to continue to be self-sustaining, something that will be much more difficult to do if Ed O’Bannon achieves the result he seeks. Expanding the revenue by almost double the amount of its previous multimedia rights contract will certainly help that.

But there also needs to be a fair bit of warning tied alongside these two deals. Neither company has experience dealing with a university in the respective fields. JMI Sports has never owned multimedia rights for any company, much less a university who has a large amount of opportunity in that area.

Fermata does have experience with athletics organizations and its trademarks, but the partnership with UK is the company’s first university partnership.

For a university whose president prides its progress on achieving the “Kentucky Promise”, having its marketing and trademarks handled by out-of-state companies who have little experience with collegiate branding sounds a little off the mark.

But the money is right for the university, and that can only be a positive when finances and college athletics goes hand-in-hand.