Oklahoma athletic director comments on SEC announcement timing

While the exact timing isn’t set in stone, the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners will be moving to the SEC eventually. That news broke over the summer, taking many — especially the Big 12 — by surprise.

Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione was asked about the circumstances around when the SEC move was announced. He said it was not up to either school’s athletic director, and when everything became public, a new plan was needed.

“I understand the difficulty of how things evolved,” Castiglione said on Wednesday. “We didn’t have any plan to handle it that way. The timing was not of our choosing. When the rumors broke, it necessitated a different kind of plan.”

The news broke on July 21, just as Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher was wrapping up his session at SEC Media Days in Birmingham, Ala. It was a couple of days of scrambling for everyone involved before both Texas and Oklahoma officially received their bids to the conference just over a week later.

From a TV contract perspective, the two powerhouse programs cannot happen before the 2025 season. However, there is a buyout the Longhorns and Sooners can pay if they want to get into the conference before then. They were announced as part of the 2022 Big 12 football schedule so the 2023 season may be the earliest time.

Castiglione denies Lincoln Riley left Oklahoma because of SEC move

When Lincoln Riley left Oklahoma to take on the USC head coaching role, there were rumors it was because he was not in favor of joining the SEC. Instead, he went off to the Pac-12 where the path to the College Football Playoff might be a little easier.

Castiglione denied these rumors last week, saying Riley was a part of the conversation when discussing the SEC. Even once everything was announced, the athletic director says the former head coach was on board.

“Coach Riley was brought into the conversation, the thought process that we were having about the future of college athletics, the rapidly changing landscape, and what we could see happening down the road,” Castiglione said. “We talked about that with him. He was engaged in our thoughts about it and he was definitely on board (with Oklahoma’s move to the SEC).

“In the many conversations since the announcement was made, he continued to be very much on board with it. We were talking about the resources and the process and things we are going to want to have in place as we move towards the transition whenever that occurs.”