Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione and Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte on Monday reiterated their faculties’ intentions to stay within the Big 12 till 2025, sustaining the general public stance they have not wavered from since asserting final July that they might depart for the SEC.
The pair met with reporters after a panel dialogue on the Texas High School Coaches Association annual conference and training college in San Antonio, the place Castiglione and Del Conte spoke to highschool coaches and directors about management.
Asked about new Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark’s feedback final week a few potential “win-win” state of affairs because it pertains to the timing of the Sooners and Longhorns’ exits from the league, each remained publicly constant.
“We realize we’ve made a decision, and we’re focused on being a great member through the time we said we would,” Castiglione mentioned. “There’s a lot changing around us. If that facilitates a conversation that needs to take place about an earlier departure, then it does.
“But I mentioned very constantly that, and I do know my counterpart Chris Del Conte has mentioned the identical factor — as has our presidents — that we knowledgeable the conference that we would depart after ’25, however we plan on fulfilling our obligations. … And in the event that they need to talk to us about one thing totally different then we’ll actually hear. But we’re targeted on making an attempt to be the perfect member of the Big 12 whereas we’re in it.”
Del Conte struck a similar tone, saying Monday that, “We’re gonna honor our commitments. So the place we’re at, I feel these issues are all untimely. I imply, we’re 45 days out from beginning the season. We’re actually getting targeted on the soccer season this yr.”
Both schools were projected to owe the Big 12 around $80 million in exit fees if they tried to break the league’s current grant of rights.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, asked Monday at SEC media days about a potential early entrance to the league by Texas and Oklahoma: “That’s not up to me. That’s about the relationship between Oklahoma, Texas and the Big 12. We are focused on the addition being effective July 1st, 2025.”
Both Castiglione and Del Conte noted they haven’t met Yormark personally but have spoken to him via league-wide videoconference calls.
The two members have continued to be a part of Big 12’s league meetings. Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy “jokingly” told reporters last week that if he were Yormark, he wouldn’t allow them in.
“We go to conference conferences, and OU and Texas are in there,” Gundy said. “They’re nonetheless within the conference. But I’m guessing once they depart, they’re scratching down issues that may assist them once they’re within the SEC. So it’s an uncommon scenario.”
Asked about Gundy’s comments, Del Conte chuckled and said,”I perceive coaches. (They’ve) acquired to put on that emotion on their sleeves and Coach Gundy’s an unbelievable human being and what an amazing coach and program he is constructed at Oklahoma State. But I get it.”
Del Conte noted that meetings have been cordial in the last year.
“We’re associates with each a kind of ADs,” he said. “We have conversations. Obviously, when the discussions had been had, they’re onerous discussions, however I feel everybody understands the place we’re going. And each dialog has been open dialogue. And I like each a kind of ADs. I like the members and I like what they characterize.”
Neither Del Conte nor Castiglione expressed surprise at USC and UCLA’s recent move to join the Big Ten, effective in 2024.
“We have been watching these modifications evolve over fairly a couple of years,” Castiglione said. “And we simply felt like there have been going to be some huge modifications, and so we needed to suppose what was greatest for our particular person establishments. And now, a yr later, there’s been lots evolve. So a few of it’s, in a way, in step with what we noticed over the horizon.”
(Photo: John Gutierrez / USA Today)
story by The Texas Tribune Source link