Hot Board: Who Will Oklahoma Hire to Replace Joe Castiglione?

For the first time in nearly three decades, the Sooners are on the hunt for an athletic director. Who will they pursue to fill the void?

Mississippi State athletic director Zac Selmon | Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

For the first time in the 21st century, Oklahoma is on the hunt for an athletic director.

Pete Thamel of ESPN reported on Monday that longtime Sooners AD Joe Castiglione will retire from his full-time role and move into the position of athletic director emeritus. Castiglione served the role at OU since 1998, overseeing the Sooners on their quest to 26 national titles across five sports.

As Castiglione has rebuilt the OU athletic department and redefined the school's sports culture, it has been decades since the Sooners have had to look for a new athletic director.

Here are a few early candidates to place Joe C:

Zac Selmon

A long time OU staffer and current Mississippi State athletic director, Zac Selmon is a legitimate candidate for the job.

Selmon is from Norman, graduating from Norman High School in 2003. He played football at Wake Forest from 2003 to 2007 before joining OU’s athletic department in 2009.

Selmon held various roles at Oklahoma from 2009 to 2023, including associate director of athletics development, senior associate athletic director and deputy athletic director for external engagement and advancement. He briefly left OU in 2014 for North Carolina, where he was the Tar Heels’ associate athletic director, but returned to work under Castiglione's wing in 2015.

In 2023, Selmon was appointed as Mississippi State’s athletic director. During his tenure in Starkville, the Bulldogs won the 2024 SEC title in women’s golf and reached the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament twice.

Selmon is the son of OU football legend Dewey Selmon, one of three Selmon brothers who earned All-America accolades on the defensive line for the Sooners under Barry Switzer in the 1970s. In addition to his dad, who went into the College Football Hall of Fame last year, his uncles are Lee Roy Selmon and Lucious Selmon, the three of whom now have a statue near the football stadium just outside Heisman Park.

Between his Oklahoma ties and success in the SEC, Zac Selmon would seem an easy choice.

Marcus Bowman

Marcus Bowman has been on OU’s staff since 2020, currently serving as the Sooners’ deputy athletics director for business development and revenue generation.

According to Oklahoma’s athletics website, Bowman is responsible for driving strategy for business and financial operations and has oversight for ticket sales, NIL and Sooner Sports Properties.

Bowman previously worked as the senior associate athletics director at UNLV for over two years. He was integral in working with the Las Vegas Raiders for the Rebels’ move to Allegiant Stadium. 

Before that, he worked at the University of Pittsburgh — Bowman’s alma mater — for over a decade. Bowman played basketball at Pitt from 2002 to 2006.

Kirby Hocutt

Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt also has ties with the Sooners.

Hocutt hails from Sherman, TX, just south of the Red River. After playing football with current head coach Brent Venables at Kansas State, Hocutt joined OU’s staff in 1999 as an associate athletics director for external operations and sports administration.

---

READ MORE OKLAHOMA SOONERS

• Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione to Retire, Per Report
• OU Depth Chart: Oklahoma Will Comfortably Blend Experience and Youth at Cheetah
• OU Depth Chart: Jaydn Ott Gives Oklahoma Clarity at Running Back

---

During his time in Norman, Hocutt led fundraising initiatives that increased annual giving from $3.4 million to over $17 million.

After that, Hocutt became the athletic director at the University of Ohio, where he served from 2005 to 2008. He then got hired to the same role at Miami (FL) and worked in Coral Gables from 2008 to 2011.

Hocutt has been Texas Tech’s athletic director since 2011, and since then, the Red Raiders have reached the NCAA postseason or a bowl game in all 17 sports and have won 18 Big 12 championships.

Wren Baker

West Virginia athletic director Wren Baker isn’t a Sooner, but he has plenty of ties to the Sooner State.

Baker, WVU’s AD since 2022, is originally from Valliant, OK. He attended undergrad at Southeastern Oklahoma State and later got his master’s degree from Oklahoma State.

Baker has climbed through the ranks of college sports over the last couple decades, serving as the athletic director at Rogers State and Northwest Missouri State before joining Memphis as the deputy director of athletics at Memphis in 2013. He stayed there for two years before landing the same role at Missouri.

In 2016, Baker got his first Division I athletic director job at North Texas, where he hired former Sooner (and future OU offensive coordinator) Seth Littrell as head coach to turn around a moribund UNT program. Baker stayed in Denton for six years before taking the AD job at West Virginia in 2022.

According to West Virginia’s athletic website, the Mountaineers turned in their second-best fundraising numbers ever in 2024. West Virginia has reached the Super Regional round of the NCAA Baseball Tournament in each of the last two seasons and has appeared in bowl games in four of the last five seasons.

This list will be updated.