Joe Castiglione opens up on the importance of finances in SEC move

There were several factors that led to the Oklahoma Sooners moving to the SEC. One of the key ones for athletic director Joe Castiglione was looking forward to the financial future of sports.

At Oklahoma’s Welcome to the SEC press conference, Castiglione addressed the finances and opened up about how they’re going to impact athletics moving forward, particularly amid the changing landscape of college athletics.

“If anybody’s been paying attention, you know that the expenses in college athletics or around college athletics are going up much faster than the rate of new revenue,” Joe Castiglione said. “We’re challenged every day and have been, back to my first days here at Oklahoma. We have to find new ways to generate revenue.”

Media deals for contracts have grown exponentially larger over the years, with the SEC and Big Ten leading the way. That meant that by staying in the Big 12, Oklahoma would have to do more to make up the gap with the schools in those conferences and compete on a national level.

“Going back to even ’98, the television revenue or the conference revenue sharing wasn’t as big of a component of an athletic department budget, back then, as it has become,” Castiglione said. “We weren’t on television as much, so obviously, the value wasn’t quite like it is today being on television, not just in football but across many sports. Conferences didn’t have their own networks. We didn’t have as much activation or integration of corporate sponsors. So, while we had some, most of that was done on the local level. Some of that now has evolved on a bigger scale for strategic reasons but we’re still doing a lot on our campus.”

Oklahoma’s move to the SEC was announced back in 2021, alongside Texas. It was a move where Joe Castiglione and the rest of the athletic department were looking forward and seeing how it was going to be more expensive to run a program, leading to questions that high media revenue can help answer.

“When we were looking at the world going forward, it wasn’t about where we were that day or where we might be two or three years from that point forward, it was where we were going to be in ’25, you know when television contracts would change,” Castiglione said.

“Where were we going to be when people realized we’re gonna have to share some revenue with athletes? Where were we gonna be then? And where were we gonna be with more and more investment across a lot of other sports — be it facilities, be it an investment in a program, handling rising costs? So, to your point, that’s where we were trying to evaluate not just what was happening right then. But how was the world going to change and where Oklahoma was going to be? Whether it was going to be following along or if it was gonna play a role in taking the opportunity to lead. That’s where I go back to the great leadership here at the University. They’re willing to step back and think and be bold about the future.”

Oklahoma and Texas moving set off a massive round of conference realignment that ended with the Big 12 adding eight new schools to replace Oklahoma and Texas. The Big Ten, meanwhile, added four schools to compete with the SEC’s expansion. On top of that, changes like NIL and the Transfer Portal have had time to impact sports while the House settlement has recently changed financial models again.

“Now, we’ve created a stability or at least a model for stability by partnering with the SEC and being a member, and for what we can do to help make the SEC itself stronger,” Castiglione concluded.