Oklahoma’s move to the SEC 10 years in the making

The foundation of college football is built on an ever-shifting bedrock, as conference realignment has redefined the sport over the last 40 years.

Whether it was the merging of teams from the Southwest Conference and Big 8, the ACC and Big Ten’s raid of the Big East, or the Pac-12’s fall from football relevance, realignment has been a constant in modern collegiate athletics. Blue-blood programs have consolidated over the last decade. The SEC and Big Ten have solidified themselves as the power players in college football, while the Big 12 and ACC have remained steady. For the moment.

It’s survival of the fittest on the collegiate landscape. Administrators are forced to be proactive and forward-thinking to ensure their school’s place at the media rights buffet.

“Understanding some way, shape or form those things that we saw eight, 10 years ago are happening,” Joe Castiglione shared with the media on Monday .

The last round of realignment saw the Big 12 lose key members, including a Nebraska program that was one of Oklahoma’s longest-running rivals. It forced Sooners’ athletic director Joe Castiglione to consider where his school stood in the collegiate athletics landscape. In the span of just a couple of years, the Big 12 went from one of the strongest conferences in football to a league in turmoil.

When Nebraska, Colorado , Missouri, and Texas A&M departed, it left the Big 12 in some unsteady waters. The additions of TCU and West Virginia righted the ship, but Castiglione knew then that realignment wasn’t over and the University of Oklahoma had to be proactive.

“It came after a lot of thought,” Castiglione ellaborated. “Deep, deep thought about us as a university, and where we are, you know, in the world, what we’re trying to accomplish, broadly as a university, and what role intercollegiate athletics plays in that. And trying to keep an eye on how college athletics was evolving much more quickly than some people 10 years ago, wanted to admit.”

It’s understandable that some institutions are frustrated with the Sooners and Longhorns for leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. It’s understandable that institutions felt left in the dark about a big-time business deal that had huge ramifications, not just for the schools involved but for the sport as a whole.

But at the end of the day, it’s not personal. It’s business.

When the writing was on the wall more than a decade ago, Joe Castiglione began to proactively look at what would be in the best interest of the University of Oklahoma. On July 1, Oklahoma officially began its tenure as an SEC school, ready to remind everyone who’s at the pinnacle of collegiate athletics.

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