Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione will retire from his full-time function during the approaching academic year, bringing an end to the longest-tenured run for a current advertisement in significant college sports, sources told ESPN.Upon the hiring
of his successor, according to sources, Castiglione will stay on as athletic director emeritus.Castiglione is entering his
28th year at Oklahoma, a span that has seen 26 nationwide titles, 117 league titles and the Sooners ‘move from the Huge 12 to the SEC. The timing of the announcement prior to this season, sources stated, will offer Oklahoma officials appropriate runway to employ a replacement during the approaching academic year. The timing of the move will permit OU to make a hire in the approaching months and shift with Castiglione on campus.Castiglione, 67, initiated the conversation about his retirement with school officials nearly a month back, per sources, and they landed on this strategy together.That job would permit Castiglione to continue to work on unique jobs at the university, as he means to live in your area.![]()
Joe Castiglione is entering his 28th year as Oklahoma’s athletic director, a tenure that has actually seen 26 national titles, 117 league titles and the Sooners ‘relocation from the Huge 12 to the SEC. AP Photo/Cliff Brunt In his nearly three decades at Oklahoma, he made a reputation as one of the industry’s most highly regarded leaders. He won Athletic Director of the Year by Sports Company Journal in 2009 and shared the award in 2018. He also won the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Sports award for the nation’s top athletic director in 2000 and 2018. One impressive fact possibly best sums up his effect on the college athletics industry: In his time at Oklahoma and Missouri, 32 of Castiglione’s workers have gone on to become athletic directors or commissioners.Castiglione spent five seasons as the athletic director at Missouri before showing up in Norman in July 1998. He worked with Bob Stoops as football coach prior to the 1999 season which launched a run of supremacy, which included the 2000 national title and 10 Big 12 titles under Stoops, who became Oklahoma’s all-time winningest coach. That hire started a run of 26 consecutive championship game for OU.In Castiglione’s tenure, Oklahoma reached the Last Four in males’s basketball both in 2002 under Kelvin Sampson and 2016 under Lon Kruger. The women’s team reached 3 Last Fours. The school’s softball program has become the nation’s finest throughout Castiglione’s time, winning eight nationwide titles under coach Patty Gasso given that 2000. Castiglione served on myriad committees over the years, consisting of the College Football Playoff committee, the males’s basketball choice committee and baseball choice committee. Per his Oklahoma bio, he’s the only athletic director to have actually served on all 3 of those committees. Over that time, he has made a function as one of the market’s most effective and highly regarded voices.Castiglione’s choice comes at a time when Oklahoma’s football program remains in a slump, as it completed with losing records in 2 of the past three seasons under fourth-year coach Brent Venables. The males’s basketball program snapped a three-year NCAA tournament dry spell when it reached the 2025 tournament in Porter Moser’s fourth season.
