Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione will retire from his full-time function through the upcoming college yr, bringing an finish to the longest-tenured run for a present AD in main school sports activities, sources informed ESPN.
Upon the hiring of his successor, in line with sources, Castiglione will keep on as athletic director emeritus.
Castiglione is getting into his twenty eighth yr at Oklahoma, a span that has seen 26 nationwide titles, 117 league titles and the Sooners’ transfer from the Large 12 to the SEC. The timing of the announcement previous to this season, sources mentioned, will give Oklahoma officers ample runway to rent a alternative through the upcoming college yr. The timing of the transfer will permit OU to make a rent within the upcoming months and transition with Castiglione on campus.
Castiglione, 67, initiated the dialog about his retirement with college officers practically a month in the past, per sources, they usually landed on this plan collectively.
That job would permit Castiglione to proceed to work on particular tasks on the college, as he intends to dwell regionally.
In his practically three a long time at Oklahoma, he earned a fame as one of many business’s most revered leaders. He received Athletic Director of the Yr by Sports activities Enterprise Journal in 2009 and shared the award in 2018. He additionally received the Nationwide Affiliation of Collegiate Administrators of Athletics award for the nation’s prime athletic director in 2000 and 2018.
One exceptional statistic maybe finest sums up his impression on the school athletics business: In his time at Oklahoma and Missouri, 32 of Castiglione’s workers have gone on to grow to be athletic administrators or commissioners.
Castiglione spent 5 seasons because the athletic director at Missouri earlier than arriving in Norman in July 1998. He employed Bob Stoops as soccer coach previous to the 1999 season and that launched a run of dominance, which included the 2000 nationwide title and 10 Large 12 titles beneath Stoops, who grew to become Oklahoma’s all-time winningest coach. That rent began a run of 26 consecutive bowl video games for OU.
In Castiglione’s tenure, Oklahoma reached the Remaining 4 in males’s basketball each in 2002 beneath Kelvin Sampson and 2016 beneath Lon Kruger. The ladies’s workforce reached three Remaining Fours. The college’s softball program has emerged because the nation’s finest throughout Castiglione’s time, profitable eight nationwide titles beneath coach Patty Gasso since 2000.
Castiglione served on myriad committees over the a long time, together with the School Soccer Playoff committee, the lads’s basketball choice committee and baseball choice committee. Per his Oklahoma bio, he is the one athletic director to have served on all three of these committees. Over that point, he has earned a job as one of many business’s strongest and revered voices.
Castiglione’s choice comes at a time when Oklahoma’s soccer program is in a stoop, because it completed with dropping data in two of the previous three seasons beneath fourth-year coach Brent Venables. The lads’s basketball program snapped a three-year NCAA match drought when it reached the 2025 match in Porter Moser’s fourth season.