Winning a Natty is Rare, but Thanks to Skip Johnson, AD Roger Denny Already Has Two

OMAHA, NE — Roger Denny, Oklahoma’s new athletic director, could be forgiven if he now believes national championships grow on trees.

In less than six months on the job, Denny’s athletic department has won two national championships.

“There's only one Oklahoma,” Denny told Sooners On SI minutes after OU’s baseball team demolished North Carolina 13-2 in the College World Series national title game. “That rings awfully true right now.”

Denny officially took the reins from Joe Castiglione on Feb. 15, and K.J. Kindler and the Sooner women’s gymnastics team won their eighth national championship on April 18.

Two months later, Skip Johnson has guided the Sooner baseball team to its third national championship and its first in 32 years. It’s OU’s first national title in one of the “big three” — football, men’s basketball and baseball — since Bob Stoops took the football crown in 2000.

Before they even met, Denny said he was impressed with his new baseball coach.

“When you get the job, you have people reach out, and certainly our baseball coach at Illinois told me, you know, we had a real one here,” Denny said. “And a couple of folks around baseball said, ‘Hey, you're really going to love this guy.’ And from the first meeting, that was on point.”

In nine seasons in Norman, Johnson has constructed a national runner-up and now, four years later, a national champion.

Castiglione was asked to weigh in on the team assembled by the former Texas Longhorns assistant he hired back in 2017.

“This team traveled the hardest road to get to the greatest destination,” Castiglione said. “I don't know where it ranks in history, but there aren't many that could have navigated that road, and to do it the way they do it, the culture of the program that Skip Johnson's developed, the way that the entire staff and the players bond together in a selfless way — you just, you search for all the right superlatives, and somehow they're just not good enough, you know? This is magical.”

Johnson was the pitching coach at Texas when Castiglione brought him from Austin to Norman to work under Pete Hughes. That lasted one season before Hughes was fired and Johnson was elevated following the 2017 season.

“Skip Johnson, there's so many attributes starting with his character and the way that he conveys that to everybody around him,” Castiglione said. “And you know, when you talk about selflessness, it starts with him, and he's always been about what's right for the players.”

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Johnson echoed the “selfless in a selfish world” mantra throughout the postseason, but how the team responded was always just a reflection of him.

OU began the season on fire, looking as talented as any team in the nation, but then hit some prolonged adversity in the middle of the year.

Now, after the Sooners won 11 of their 13 NCAA Tournament games, OU stamped itself as the premier squad in all of college baseball. They clearly have talent, but what separated this team from North Carolina and all the others is its chemistry, its camaraderie, its resilience and its grit.

“Yeah, that's Skip, man,” Denny said. “Never doubt that guy. He leads from his heart and knows exactly who he is and who he wants us to be, and those guys follow his lead and never doubt him.”

Those around him, like Denny, give credit to the man everyone calls Skip.

But Arthur Ray Johnson deflects any and all praise to his players and his coaching staff.

Arthur Ray. pic.twitter.com/yAAOyJdnsc
— Oklahoma Baseball (@OU_Baseball) June 23, 2026

“It was amazing how they came together and started caring a lot about each other,” Johnson said Monday night in the postgame press conference. “A lot of times we as coaches sit there and talk about, ‘Hey, you don't know who is going to get the biggest hit; you don't know who is going to make the biggest play or throw the last pitch of the game,’ or whatever. But it's just about being selfless.

“Because when we start the season, everybody's your friend and everybody gets to play intrasquad (scrimmages). And all of a sudden you don't get to play intrasquad, then you get to play the games, it gets really hard because you want to make everybody happy.

And you can't make everybody happy. You've got to play with the guys that are going good, that make your lineup better, that are hot in the bullpen, that they're showing you confidence.”

The Sooners opened the 2026 regular season 16-2, but then finished it by going 18-20. That resulted in another losing record in Southeastern Conference play, where OU finished year two as an SEC member just 14-16 for the second year in a row.

But then the postseason began, and this Oklahoma club became a different team.

There were moments of Sooner Magic, to be sure, like Dayton Tockey’s walk-off home run at Georgia Tech, or Jackson Cleveland’s five-out save against Georgia, or Dasan Harris’ throw to third base to prevent a run in the title game against UNC. But make no mistake, this OU team simply pummeled the opposition by an aggregate score of 112-53 (8.4 to 4.1 per game).

“I’m telling you, they got really confident, and they cared a lot about each other,” Johnson said. “They didn't want to give in. And that was what was incredible. They never gave in, and they were selfless for that.”

As stories began to flow during the postgame revelry on Charles Schwab Field, one came up that depicted the players breaking into almost uncontrollable fits of laughter during the regional at Georgia Tech.

After losing 9-3 to the host Yellow Jackets in the semifinals, the bats — which had largely struggled for so much of the season — suddenly went nuclear.

Against The Citadel, 15 runs. In the rematch with Tech, an 8-2 deficit, followed by a 9-run inning that included solo home runs from Brendan Brock and Trey Gambill and a grand slam from Deiten Lachance in what became a 15-8 wipeout that not only literally saved the season, it flipped the entire operation on its head.

Tockey’s walk-off blast in the 10th inning sent the Sooners on to the super regional round, where Kansas never had a chance. In the CWS, OU hammered Alabama 9-0, outlasted Georgia 4-3, then eliminated the Bulldogs 11-4 to set up the showdown with UNC. OU’s two wins over the Tar Heels were 9-3 and 13-2.

Those late innings in Atlanta, where players had begun simply laughing at each other because it seemed no one could get them out, created something unforeseen — a vibe, perhaps, that these guys decided to ride all the way to a national championship.

What was that vibe, though? Was it disbelief? Was it delirium? Was it simply throwing caution to the wind? Or was it a sudden, supreme confidence, or some other cosmic power no one saw coming?

“Oh, they could believe it,” Johnson said. “I promise you. Because they believed it. There's no doubt about that. They weren't giving in.

“The coolest moment at Georgia Tech was when Trey Gambill talked to the team and told them, ‘Hey, we're going to get hit in the mouth.’

“I really think that helped the pitchers because it says, ‘Hey, man, they can go out there and throw the ball to the target. They hit a three-run homer, we're going to go out and get four.’

“That's what they believed. And they believed in each other, and it's a powerful thing when — you might not have the most talented team in the world, but you had the most competitive team in the world, and good teammates. And with the right attitude, you can go a long ways.”

That’s the part that has impressed Denny all along. He saw the Sooners’ hot start. He saw their midseason maladies. And he saw who they would become during the postseason — one of the all-time college baseball fairy tale champions — because of one Arthur Ray “Skip” Johnson.

“Not just who he is, but the way he leads and the humility he brings,” Denny said. “And again, our guys followed his lead. It's really impressive stuff.”

Denny is a forward thinker who looks to the future, to what’s next. But he’ll always revel in the spring of 2026, when his new school picked him up a quick pair of national championships.

“To get two of them in the first four months is pretty special,” Denny said, “and to do it this way with these guys behind that leader, you can't ask for nothing more than that.”

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