LEXINGTON, Ky. - University of Kentucky athletics is joining the jet set of college sports.
The University of Kentucky Athletics Association Board of Directors approved funding a private plane for use in recruiting.
The plane will be available to the sports of football, men's basketball and, to a lesser degree, women's basketball. University of Kentucky Deputy Athletics Director Rob Mullens says the university will look to buy between 100 and 150 hours of flight time in the 2008-09 school year.
In recent years, members Luther Deaton and Bill Gatton lobbied for UK to buy a plane to help football and men's basketball coaches keep pace with competing recruiters.
Deaton and Mullens noted that as many as two-thirds of Kentucky's competing schools in the Southeastern Conference owned their own planes.
While Kentucky will look to lease a plane this coming academic year, UK president Lee Todd adamantly opposed the idea of buying a plane.
"That will not happen," he said in a post-meeting interview. "I don't see it happening under my (tenure)."
Todd saw the leasing of a plane as "budget neutral." The cost, which Mullens estimated at about $4,000 per hour, would be partially offset by what UKAA would have paid for commercial flights, hotel rooms and other travel expenses.
