Joe Castiglione details OU's plan for NCAA revenue sharing
In an email to OU donors and season ticket holders, athletics director Joe Castiglione announced that former AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson will take on an advisory role with Oklahoma as it prepares for the NCAA revenue share.
The House vs. NCAA class action lawsuit, which is expected to have a resolution in the coming months, will result in the school sharing revenue with many OU student-athletes. According to Castiglione, the baseline total will be approximately $20.5 million in addition to annual costs for OU Athletics. Stephenson, who is an OU alumnus, has an extensive background working in sports. Per the email, under his leadership, “AT&T and its subsidiaries, working with its media partners, changed how America engaged with many of the world’s premier sports brands, including pioneering programming such as the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV, the NFL Red Zone, NBA on TNT, MLB Playoffs, and NCAA March Madness on Turner networks.”
Castiglione believes the partnership with Stephenson, who will not be compensated, will give the Sooners a head start on the inevitable.
“Notwithstanding these substantial new financial commitments to our student-athletes, OU Athletics remains steadfast in our commitment to all 21 of our sports and to proudly remain one of the few collegiate athletics programs that is economically self-sustaining, resulting in no student or public dollars contributing to the athletics enterprise,” Castiglione said in the email. “Our expectation, once the settlement is approved, is that we will be offering substantially more aid to our student-athletes because the proposed settlement would eliminate limits for athletics scholarships and instead set roster sizes for each sport. An additional impact of the settlement will be the contributions to funding the backpay financial damages required by the House settlement. I am confident we are ready to meet these challenges.”
Top 10
- 1Hot
12-Team CFP bracket
The updated field is set
- 2
Miami AD shot at Alabama
Dan Radakovich has CFP issues
- 3
Bama over Miami
CFP Chair addresses controversy
- 4New
CFP Top 25 revealed
Controversy is here
- 5Breaking
Kobe Prentice
Alabama WR to transfer
In addition to Stephenson working with OU, the email explained that major changes are coming to the athletic department and specifically the football program.
“He will help guide us into restructuring our budget for this new world of college sports and into developing a football structure with elements similar to professional sports teams,” Castiglione said. “This includes building out a more expansive General Manager function and developing a dynamic model that will allow OU Football to become a national gold-standard around talent acquisition, portal management, and player development. College athletics remains unique, but adaptations that draw upon the professional model are necessary to compete at the highest level. As part of Randall’s work, he also will make recommendations for funding player compensation and offer insights into pioneering governance models and athletics structures that will set up OU Athletics for success far into the future.”
You can read the full email here.
