Sources: Oklahoma ad Castiglione withdrew from the full -time role

Oklahoma sports director Joe Castiglione will retire his full -time role during the coming school year, ending the longest race for a current announcement in major university sports, sources told ESPN in ESPN.

According to sources, Castiglione as an emeritus sports director.

Castiglione begins its 28th year in Oklahoma, a period which saw 26 national titles, 117 League titles and the move of the Big 12 Sooners at the SEC. The moment of the announcement before this season, according to sources, will give Oklahoma officials an adequate track to hire a replacement during the coming school year. The time of the move will allow or make a rental in the coming months and the transition with Castiglione on the campus.

Castiglione, 67, started the conversation on his retirement with school officials almost a month ago, by sources, and they landed on this plan together.

This work would allow Castiglione to continue working on special projects at university, because it intends to live locally.

During his almost three decades at Oklahoma, he acquired the reputation of one of the most respected leaders in the industry. He won the sports director of the year by Sports Business Journal in 2009 and shared the prize in 2018. He also won the National Association of Collegiate Director of Athletics Award for the best sports director in the country in 2000 and 2018.

A remarkable statistic perhaps best sums up its impact on the college athletics industry: in its time in Oklahoma and Missouri, 32 of Castiglione employees have become sports directors or commissioners.

Castiglione spent five seasons as a sports director of Missouri before arriving in Norman in July 1998. He hired Bob Stoops as a football coach before the 1999 season and who launched a series of dominance, which included the national title 2000 and 10 Big 12 Under Stoops titles, who became coach of all time in Oklahoma. This rental began a series of 26 consecutive Bowl games for or.

In Castiglione’s mandate, Oklahoma reached the Final Four in male basketball in 2002 under Kelvin Sampson and 2016 under Long Kruger. The women’s team has reached three Final Fours. The school softball program has become the best in the country at the time of Castiglione, winning eight national titles under the Patty Gasso coach since 2000.

Castiglione sat on a myriad of committees during the decades, including the University Football Chairs Committee, the male basketball selection committee and the baseball selection committee. According to his biography of Oklahoma, he is the only sports director to have sat on these three committees. During this period, he won a role as one of the most powerful and respected voices in the industry.

Castiglione’s decision comes at a time when the Oklahoma football program is in crisis, because it has finished with the loss of records in the past two of the last three seasons under the direction of the Venable Brent -Year coach. The male basketball program broke a drought of the NCAA tournament three years when it reached the tournament in 2025 in the fourth season of Porter Moser.