Does Oklahoma State Follow the Lead of OU and AD Joe Castiglione? We Find Out Friday
STILLWATER – The Oklahoma State University/A&M Board of Regents has its final meeting of the fiscal year on Friday morning in Oklahoma City at Oklahoma State University-OKC. The agenda doesn’t reflect anything specific regarding athletics, but there are entries built into the agenda to allow for some necessary discussion and action.
The House vs. NCAA settlement was approved by Federal District Judge Claudia Wilken last Friday and this will be the final Regents meeting before Oklahoma State, like many other Division I and Power Conference schools, will begin paying athletes directly.
On Thursday at the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents meeting, athletics director for OU, Joe Castiglione, outlined his department’s plan. Oklahoma is going to pay directly to athletes in six sports that they offer. Those sports are football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and women’s gymnastics. The University of Oklahoma (Norman campus) has a running debt of right around $1 billion. The OU athletic department had a debt listed at $192 million as of the end of fiscal year 2023-24.
Currently, Oklahoma State has no debt in athletics, and the overall campus is reportedly in good financial standing as well. As vice president and athletics director Chad Weiberg told Pokes Report earlier this year.
“[Revenue sharing] is something we have to do if we want to stay competitive. We are entering into this revenue sharing time and $20.5 million that we don’t have in our budget sitting around at the end of the year,” Chad Weiberg told me. “We are going to have to generate additional revenue in every way that we can. Our ability to sell tickets and people give to the program, all of those are going to be a part of it.”
All we can do is guess. Remember, the amount that each sport actually gets is way more important and critical than which or how many sports are involved.
At Oklahoma State, football and men’s basketball have to be included. Most schools believe football should get 70-75%. Basketball roughly 15%, and then any other sports fortunate enough to be included would share the other 10-15%. For OSU, wrestling has to be included and then including women’s basketball, baseball, and softball would make sense.
