National Football Foundation

It’s an early game day in Norman, Okla. The Sooners’ Gaylord Family Stadium is littered with ushers and vendors preparing for another Sooner football game. Outside the stadium, Oklahoma Athletics Director Joe Castiglione is getting ready to rev up the golf cart for the Sooner tailgate circuit. This is about reaching out to people, maintaining relationships, creating new ones and polishing the OU brand.

“I would drive around with him on game days and saw the way he would interact with fans,” said Missouri’s Director of Development T.J. Leon, who was a graduate assistant in the Sooner Club Development Office several years ago. “He was like the mayor in his golf cart. Fans would yell, ‘Joe, we love you!’”

Up in the press box, he visits with beat writers, then moves back down onto the field to present individual awards and recognize Sooner sports teams. Castiglione is a man on the move.

“He makes people feel important,” Leon continued. “He builds relationships whether people can help him or not. He is great at building relationships. I wish I could do what he is doing one-tenth of the time.”

Castiglione, 56, has earned extraordinary popularity since arriving in 1998 by managing the financial, academic and competitive rise of the Sooner Athletic Program. Initially faced with a crucial hiring of a head football coach scant months after arriving on campus, Castiglione selected Florida assistant coach Bob Stoops. The move helped re-established Oklahoma as a national football power.

“I really came to see that Bob was wise beyond his years,” Castiglione said. “Most importantly, I thought he had the character to handle this job. I also have to give credit to President David Boren and key people we had to assemble as part of the selection committee.”

Stoops didn’t disappoint Castiglione, who had put his reputation on the line by hiring an assistant coach instead of an established head coach to resurrect one of college football’s most storied programs. By Stoops’ second season, he had led the Sooners to their seventh national football championship. Entering the 2013 season, Stoops’ OU teams had won eight Big 12 Conference football titles in 14 seasons and played in four national title games.

In part because Sooner football has prospered, the rest of the athletic department has profited as well. In all sports under Castiglione, entering the 2013-14 academic year, the Sooners have won seven national championships and more than 60 conference titles, while achieving record graduation rates and gradepoint averages. OU’s athletic department is self-sustaining with a more than $8 million surplus, which is contributed annually to the school’s academic budget.

“We have early on been able to put some programs in place to make the most out of our success when it occurred,” Castiglione said. “The success occurred much sooner than anybody predicted — the second year. We had launched a capital campaign — actually, it was a continuation of a campaign started before I got here — but it was put on hold and a new goal of $100 million was set in the fall of 2000.”

While the centerpiece for the capital campaign was the renovation of the Sooner football stadium, Castiglione also targeted building, refurbishing, remodeling or expanding facilities for all sports, which has occurred during his watch as about $340 million has been raised. Oklahoma recently added a 21st sport, women’s rowing, and is building and on-campus rowing facility. A student housing center also has been constructed and multiple scholarships endowed.

A former walk-on football player at the University of Maryland who never suited up for a varsity game, Castiglione got his professional start as sports promotions director at Rice in 1979, then moved to Georgetown 17 months later for another short tour as director of athletic fundraising. 

After landing at Missouri in 1981, he held various positions, and he eventually took over as athletics director in 1993, a post he held until became the Sooners athletics director in 1998. He generally is credited with setting the stage in development of facilities and fundraising for the renaissance of Missouri football under Coach Gary Pinkel.

Winning the Toner Award makes those 12- to 18-hour days in Norman all the more worth it. During Castiglione’s tenure, eight Sooner players and one head coach have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

“I am beyond humbled and honored,” Castiglione said. “It is just not for me, but for the people who made the success possible — President Boren, the student-athletes competing, and the successes that happen in a variety of sports with the coaches and staff I was fortunate to work with. If not for them, we would be talking about something much different.”