Joe Castiglione - Vice President & Director of Athletics - Staff Directory

Staff Directory

Joe Castiglione

Title:
Vice President & Director of Athletics

Few collegiate athletics administrators have experienced the long-term success that Joe Castiglione has enjoyed at the University of Oklahoma.

In his 28th year at the helm of the legendary program, he leads an OU Athletics Department that hardly resembles the one that welcomed him in July of 1998. From conference realignment — now in the Southeastern Conference after 28 years in the Big 12 — to fundraising records and significant growth in capital projects, Castiglione has shaped and stewarded the department’s widespread and longstanding success. In fact, the Sooners have won 26 of their 45 team national championships since he arrived in Norman. He has celebrated 117 conference titles in that same period.

By creating a positive culture based on core values, a dynamic vision and a collaborative spirit, Castiglione has made OU Athletics a “destination of choice” and a world-class experience for student-athlete development.

Of course, Oklahoma is not immune to any of the challenges intercollegiate athletics has faced in the past quarter century, and through it all, Castiglione has stood unwavering in his commitment to position OU Athletics as one of the nation’s premier programs. For many, it was his response to the COVID-19 pandemic that demonstrated the leader he really is.

As the pandemic arrived, then continued to worsen, Castiglione led the department through the sudden ending of the academics and athletics year with a calm and determined approach. His leadership gave OU’s student-athletes, coaches and staff ample reasons to be confident the Sooners would get through the challenges that awaited. Their confidence was warranted.

After an incredibly successful 2023-24 athletics campaign that yielded OU’s eighth softball national championship, including an unprecedented fourth straight and sixth in eight seasons, the 2024-25 academic year was even more fruitful. Highlights included women’s gymnastics sharing the SEC regular season title and winning its seventh national championship, all in the last 11 seasons, softball claiming the regular season SEC crown and sharing the league’s postseason tournament title, men’s gymnastics winning the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation championship and finishing third at NCAAs, men’s (sixth) and women’s (14th) track and field both finishing in the top 15 at the NCAA Outdoor Championships for the first time in program history and women’s basketball advancing to the Sweet 16 for the first time in 12 years.

The Learfield Director’s Cup recognizes overall program excellence. The Sooners have ranked among the top 25 in 22 of Castiglione’s 27 years and finished ninth in 2024-25, their best showing since 2012-13. (With the interruption of competition schedules, the Learfield Director’s Cup was not awarded for 2019-20.)

Individually, OU student-athletes during Castiglione’s tenure have flourished, producing countless all-conference, All-America and national-player-of-the-year honors, including Heisman Trophy winners Jason White, Sam Bradford, Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray, Naismith and Wooden Award winners Blake Griffin and Buddy Hield, and USA Softball Collegiate Players of the Year Keilani Ricketts and Jocelyn Alo (twice each). Alo is the NCAA’s all-time record holder in home runs. Sooners were named Big 12 Athlete of the Year 15 times in the first 28 years of the league, including 11 times over OU’s last 12 years as a member.

GPA numbers and graduation rates continue to set program records under Castiglione’s watch. OU’s standard-setting 3.31 cumulative 2025 spring semester GPA marked the 27th consecutive term that OU’s student-athletes as a group recorded a 3.0 or better figure.

OU Athletics, one of the few remaining self-sustaining departments nationally, has been a model of fiscal responsibility, closing the books in the black in each of Castiglione’s first 22 years, including the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season, and again in 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24. His responsible approach has benefited the general campus. Through direct and indirect support, the athletics department provides millions of dollars annually to OU’s academic budget. It also established an endowment at Bizzell Library and partnered with the president’s office to eliminate the admission fee at OU’s internationally known Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

Athletics facilities improvement and construction have been carried out at a record pace and Castiglione takes pride in the fact that the majority of those improvements have been funded with private donations. He was instrumental in the athletics department’s major campaign at the turn of the century, Great Expectations: The Campaign for Sooner Sports, that impacted each of OU’s athletics programs and became a national model. During the 2021-22 fiscal year, OU Athletics received a record-breaking $109 million in donations and pledges (the previous single-year record was $58 million), and followed in 2022-23 with its second-highest figure in school history ($79 million). The 2023-24 fiscal year resulted in another fundraising record, as the Sooners secured $110.3 million in total donations and pledges.

A $160 million Gaylord Family — Oklahoma Memorial Stadium renovation was completed prior to the 2017 season and included enclosure of the south end zone, new seating options for Sooner fans and new team facilities. The Griffin Family Performance Center for men’s and women’s basketball at Lloyd Noble Center opened in 2018. Refurbished men’s and women’s basketball team areas and construction on a new softball stadium — Love’s Field — were completed in spring 2024. Other projects underway include new team facilities for golf, gymnastics and tennis, with major renovations planned for baseball. The $75 million Headington Hall provides housing for the general student population as well as student-athletes and is recognized as making OU the leader in providing an engaging community living option for students. The state-of-the-art building opened in August 2013 and has won the President’s Trophy as the outstanding housing unit on campus five times.

In 2021, Castiglione recommended to the OU President and Board of Regents that the university seek membership in the Southeastern Conference for an eventual 2025 move. Castiglione, who played a large role in the formation of the Big 12, ensured OU fulfilled its obligations to the league, which the Sooners joined in 1996. After negotiating an agreeable earlier exit from the Big 12, OU entered the SEC officially on July 1, 2024, after 28 years in the Big 12. The decision arguably set in motion a series of conference realignments that followed throughout the then-Power Five conferences. Membership in the SEC for OU, according to Castiglione, was always about seizing future stability for the university at a time of great disruption within intercollegiate athletics.

Castiglione was named Co-National Athletic Director of the Year in May 2018 by Sports Business Journal. He had won the award in 2009 and been a finalist in 2016. A survey conducted by Sports Illustrated in the summer of 2017 named him the best athletics director in the country, and Stadium selected him in 2020 as the nation’s top AD. Other awards and honors include the 2023 LEAD1 Association Pearl Award of Excellence, 2018 Katha Quinn Award (U.S. Basketball Writers of America); 2018 induction into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame; the 2013 John L. Toner Award (National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame); Carl Maddox Sports Management Award (United States Sports Academy); 2000 and 2018 Athletics Director of the Year (NACDA); 2004 Athletics Director of the Year (Bobby Dodd Foundation); 2003 induction into the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators Hall of Fame; and the 2001 General Robert R. Neyland Athletic Director Award for lifetime achievement (All-American Football Foundation).

He earned a master’s of education degree in May 2007 and became an adjunct professor in OU’s Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, teaching graduate classes in marketing, development and leadership in higher education. He serves on the college’s board of advocates and received the “Award of Distinction” given by the college in 2019. He was recognized for his distinguished service by OU’s College of Arts and Sciences and was named a Price College Distinguished Partner in 2018.

Hired on April 30, 1998, Castiglione previously served as athletics director at Missouri for five years. His career began as the sports promotions director at Rice. Other stops included director of athletic fundraising at Georgetown, then director of communications and marketing at Missouri. He marks his 32nd year of serving student-athletes as an athletics director with the 2024-25 academic year.

A 1979 Maryland graduate, Castiglione received the university’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in April 2007 and was inducted into the State of Missouri’s Sports Hall of Fame in November 2015.

He completed a term on the College Football Playoff Committee in January 2021, making him the only person in history to serve on that committee as well as the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball and Baseball committees. He has served on multiple NCAA committees and commissions, including the NCAA’s Board of Governor’s Commission to Combat Sexual Violence on Campus, NCAA Championship/Competition Cabinet, the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Discussion Group and the United States Olympic Committee Athlete Career and Education Strategic Working Group. He formerly served on the Gatorade Collegiate Advisory Board and continues to serve on the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame Board of Directors.

Castiglione is a past president of both the Division I-A Athletic Directors Association and NACDA. He also served three terms as the chair of the Big 12 Board of Athletics Directors. A former member of the Phi Delta Theta Foundation Board of Trustees, he is a highly requested speaker at annual conventions and continuing education institutes. In November 2011, his hometown recognized him by selecting him for the Broward County (Fla.) Sports Hall of Fame.

Locally, he has served the United Way of Norman, among other organizations. His third term as OU’s campus co-chair resulted in the highest recorded contributions ever by faculty, staff and students to the United Way of Norman’s annual campaign. He encourages student-athletes and athletics staff to engage in those efforts as well, with OU Athletics representatives having been known to participate in more than 5,000 hours of community service per year.

A native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Castiglione is married to the former Kristen Bartel, a 1990 graduate of the University of Missouri. They are the parents of two sons, Joseph Jr., who earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree and a master’s degree from Oklahoma in 2019 and 2021, respectively, and Jonathan, who graduated from OU in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism (creative media production).