Joe C. Clarifies How Oklahoma Will Support its 2021 Spring Sports Athletes

Joe Castiglione had a little more to say.

During a 57-minute conference call with media on Thursday, Oklahoma's athletic director said OU was “supportive of providing the funding necessary for all of the student-athletes that decide to stay here for an additional year. We’ve made a plan for that.”

After the call, Castiglione learned more details.

First came Thursday’s news out of Wisconsin that UW would not welcome back its 2020 seniors next year despite a March 30 NCAA rule change allowing an additional year of eligibility following the Coronavirus shutdown.

Student-athletes can apply for the waiver for another year, but it’s at schools’ discretion to provide continuing athletic scholarships. Wisconsin said it would not pursue those eligibility waivers, much less provide the scholarship money.

“What we tried to do was encourage our seniors to go ahead and, if you’re going to graduate, graduate and move on with your life,” Badgers AD Barry Alvarez said Wednesday on his monthly radio show. “We appreciate everything that you’ve done. But move forward. The future is in question, and we can’t promise you anything.”

Castiglione had taken a completely different stance regarding OU spring sports athletes coming back in 2021.

On Friday, Castiglione called SI Sooners to clarify that stance.

“The institution,” Castiglione said Friday, “will choose to support the additional financial aid necessary for those student-athletes who choose to come back.”

Student-athletes who come back next year, he clarified, “will have the opportunity to receive up to the same amount of aid they were given during this current academic year.”

He said the final tally of returning seniors in 2021 isn’t in yet, but estimated a baseline additional expense of a half-million dollars for scholarships next year to accommodate the 2020 seniors who have already declared their intention to return.

So far, three softball seniors, seven baseball seniors and one women’s golf senior have announced they want to replay their senior year at OU in 2021. An additional 27 seniors in OU’s other spring sports have not yet declared.

“Minimally, we’re expecting it to be $500,000 (in additional scholarship money),” he said. “That can go up depending on how many take advantage of it.”

For most of the last 20 years, Oklahoma has been one of a handful universities nationally whose athletic department is financially self-sufficient. OU’s sports don’t rely on student fees or government subsidies. According to USA Today, Sooner athletics took in more than $175 million in 2017-2018 and turned a profit of almost $23 million.

Most schools don’t come anywhere close to that bottom line and many will be unable to provide scholarship assistance for student-athletes seeking the eligibility waiver.

Castiglione realizes the COVID-19 pandemic means there will be shortfalls “in the millions” from revenue lost to this year’s cancelled Big 12 Tournaments and NCAA Championships. It’s highly likely in the current economy that donations and gifts from booster will drop precipitously in fiscal year 2021. And no one wants to guess at how much money could be lost from a truncated, cancelled or otherwise disrupted football season.

But Castiglione is steadfast that his spring sports student-athletes will not be on the hook for major unforeseen academic expenses next year.

“I thought it was disingenuous to be supportive of an additional year of eligibility for student-athletes,” he said, “and then turn around and not fund it. I don’t know how the two of those would make any sense.

“To me, that’s the core of what we’re about: world class student-athlete experience. All of our decisions are always gonna be based off of that.”

There are additional complexities, Castiglione cautioned, layers within layers — particularly for future classes and incoming student-athletes. Coaches will have the prerogative to move money around within the framework of the new rules and the school’s normal practices.

But, Castiglione reiterated, “from a department, we’re budgeting the money to do it. That won’t change.

“But I do understand that it’s still possible that a coach may have to work some things around between athletes.”

Some NCAA sports, such as football and basketball, are full-scholarship or “head count” sports. Most of the rest are partial-scholarship or “equivalency” sports — 27 scholarship baseball players dividing up the equivalent of 11.7 full scholarships, for example.

Most spring sports athletes attend college on a partial scholarship — the cost of books, for instance, or room and board, or a percentage of the cost of a scholarship, or some combination agreed to between the coach and the student-athlete. (Some, usually seniors or exceptional underclassmen, do receive the equivalent of full scholarships.)

“It’s going to be very tricky this year (figuring out 2021’s allotments) because (coaches) might have promised somebody they were going to get more aid next year,” Castiglione said, “and there may be some calculation that ends up being somewhat different.”

“The way the NCAA rule is written, all the student-athletes on that squad were given an additional year of eligibility. In the case of the rule, they’re permitted to get up to the same aid they received this year. Where I’m trying to draw the distinction is that a returning player — let’s say not a senior, because coaches were already planning for them to graduate, move on, whatever. …

“Let’s say as a freshman you came in and you were gonna be on .25 (financial) aid. But then knowing how student-athletes were moving on, roster changes were taking place, the next year you could be on .4 or .5. Just making numbers up. Well, the coach is still gonna have to figure out how to make that work within a calculation, because a coach can’t go back on their word to a freshman they promised additional aid. … Well, they can, but that’s gonna create problems.

“This is what I meant by the complexities. I said it’s probably gonna be somewhat easier to work it through this year, but the following year, the complexities are gonna be too many to mention. That is true. Because there are a lot of things the coach is gonna have to work through. That’s the unintended consequences of the way this was worded.”

So OU isn’t going to reduce scholarships. But a coach has the discretion to move a student-athlete’s money around as needed.

Make sense yet?

“You might be thinking, wait a minute, didn’t the institution say they were going to pay the same amount of aid?” Castiglione said. “Well, we are budgeting for it, yes. It’s available to them, yes. But the way the rule is written, it permits — it permits — the universities to decide if they’re going to award any aid at all, but no more than the amount of aid a student-athlete received in the past year. … So it’s gonna be a really challenging equation to work it all out. It can be done. But I don’t know any other way to say it. That’s my conundrum there to make it simple.”

“This is a calculus problem,” Castiglione said with a laugh. “And coaches are really sharp working all this out. But there could be something in there to make it work. Keep in mind, it’s not just the returning kids they have to worry about. They have incoming student-athletes that signed national letters of intent based on certain aid promises. And so everybody’s going to get what they were promised. That part is for sure. We just have to work that out.

“At Oklahoma, there’s two things that happen. One, we’re honoring the additional year of eligibility, and we’re honoring aid up to the maximum they received this past year.

“But within that, there could be a little bit of movement that doesn’t violate what we just said.”

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