Why Joe Castiglione Sees Stadium Upgrades as a 'Vehicle' of Progress for Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s next stadium upgrade is a project decades in the making.

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Board of Regents approved upgrades to the west side of Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.

The renovations will mark one of the last major projects that Vice President and Director of Athletics Joe Castiglione oversees for the Sooners.

Castiglione is set to retire in June 2028. He will serve as Athletics Director Emeritus after his replacement is hired, where he will assist Oklahoma in fundraising, and he will provide counsel and assistance to OU’s new AD.

The Sooners have won 26 team national titles and 117 team conference championships under Castiglione, but the continual upgrades to Oklahoma’s Palace on the Prairie will always serve as an important piece of Castiglione’s legacy.

Under his guidance, Oklahoma Memorial Stadium has seen transformational improvements on its east side, south side and will soon enjoy a virtually brand new west side.

But the new project is not about putting the finishing touches on his legacy in Norman, Castiglione said.

“This is not one person's vision — It's a product of a lot of people's perspective, their input … their understanding of what is best for Oklahoma,” he said. “But at the end of the day, at the end of this type of plan, it's Oklahoma's plan.”

The driving force behind Oklahoma’s stadium plans has always been the same — to provide the best experience to both fans and players alike in Norman.

“We brought in a lot of subject matter experts,” Castiglione said. “We took surveys of fans, we've compared this nationally, internationally … What keeps them coming to the stadium at a time when it is so easy to consume sports just right wherever you are?”

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Castiglione said he and everyone involved in the decision-making at Oklahoma want to continue to make every game day in Norman a unique and exciting atmosphere that cannot be obtained anywhere else.

“You can't replicate a game day experience on a phone, on a TV, in your house,” Castiglione said. “It can be nice, but you can't replicate a game day experience. So if you step back and look at this in a much broader perspective, you realize that coming to campus begins sort of that step of a journey to an experience that is unlike any other.

“And you start with a sense of arrival. We're unique. This stadium is one of the few that's right in the center of a campus. And with that, as great an asset as that creates, it also creates some challenges of how to maneuver everything around what's already there and protect the beauty of what our campus offers.”

University of Oklahoma President Joseph Harroz Jr. praised Castiglione’s foresight with the stadium master plan.

“The Board sees this vision in a way that is, I think, in high definition,” Harroz said. “It’s a really unique alignment where you have a visionary AD, and you’ve got administrative support and then the Board behind a project like this. It’s a product of their vision. This is the right time, and we think it gives us an additional competitive advantage on to go forward.”

Castilione, however, said the project would not be possible without Harroz, but also the support of the fans who don the Crimson and Cream every Saturday and throughout the year.

“I can say this, you've got a president with not just a great vision but a bold strategy that permeates everything that we're doing,” Castiglione said. “But at the end of the day if you take all of us out and take somebody else in, this is still the right vision for the University of Oklahoma. That I feel good about being part of standing shoulder to shoulder with anybody saying this is what's right for Oklahoma. Because that's what we do. What we do to keep this University, this athletic department, to keep attracting the best and the brightest athletes here.

“That's going to be our legacy and that's going to be the engine that drives our program forward. So the stadium is just but one vehicle to do that.”