Oklahoma has joined the Southeastern Conference in historic fashion.
OU’s Board of Regents, along with Texas’ regents, voted unanimously Friday to accept the SEC’s invitation to join the conference. The schools intend to make the move on July 1, 2025, as both plan on staying within their current grant of rights agreements with the Big 12.
Here's the moment the #Sooners officially joined the SEC."Welcome to the Southeastern Conference." pic.twitter.com/nO8UaKCm9A
— Chandler E. (@ctengelbrecht) July 30, 2021
Although planned to compete in the SEC in 2025, OU and Texas may join the conference earlier, as the Big 12 is now without its top money-producing schools and only programs with stadiums that hold above 62,000 fans.
Now, the SEC, the most powerful conference in college athletics, becomes the first Power Five conference to expand to 16 teams. Including OU, five of the future SEC schools finished top 13 in the final AP Top 25 football poll last season.
“We are confident that this transition will reap extraordinary success for our athletics program,” OU President Joseph Harroz wrote in a university-wide statement. “We will be able to continue to attract top student-athlete talent from across the country. We’ll provide an even greater world-class fan experience. All told, we’ll set up our programs for even greater success and be able to better tell the life-changing OU story all across the country.”
The SEC extended OU and UT invitations to the conference after a unanimous vote at a meeting Thursday. It was a whirlwind series of events, which may ultimately remake the landscape of college sports, as initial news of OU and Texas’ reaching out to join the SEC came just 10 days ago.
The news caught the Big 12 off guard, with Commissioner Bob Bowlsby stating he wished other conference schools were notified of the plan.
OU Athletic Director Joe Castiglione, who emphasized the relationships he’s made inside the Big 12, responded on Friday.
“With last week’s timing, (of the report) there’s not a lot to choose,” Castiglione said. “We would’ve preferred to provide calls or contacts to many of our colleagues throughout this conference, throughout the state and elsewhere.”
Harroz later transitioned into the history of the current media grant of rights agreement, which was put in place in 2010 — the year Nebraska and Colorado left the Big 12 for the Big Ten and Pac-12, respectfully. Two years later after the agreement, Texas A&M and Missouri departed for the SEC.
“What’s changed between 2012 and today?” Harroz asked rhetorically. “The answer is everything.”
Oklahoma felt clear the Big 12 was “last in line” for media negotiations, among all Power Five conferences and the rest of the five major sports in the country. It was important for OU to change that and transition leagues, Harroz and Castiglione emphasized.
Harroz listed two imperatives and two preferences for OU’s athletics program. The 53-year-old, who has risen from an OU undergraduate to university president, stated maintaining the Sooners’ status as a national power, along with their athletics budget not subsidized by student tuition and fees, were the most important issues. In an OU-wide sent email, Harroz said without joining the SEC, those necessities would be at risk.
According to the regents, all of whom were present minus Frank Keating, whom chairman Michael Cawley said supported the move along with the six-voting members present, the SEC gives OU the best chance to create that reality. However, despite the excitement surrounding the move, Harroz said unfortunately not all desires can be honored.
“We prefer to be in the same athletic conference as Oklahoma State University,” Harroz said. “And we prefer to play the University of Texas every year in Dallas. Regrettably, the landscape we’re looking at right now, these big changes that we talked about, don’t allow for all four of those to occur.”
Now, as OU heads into a season with national championship expectations, a young, established coach in Lincoln Riley and seven five-star recruits on the roster, the timing was right to capitalize on athletics’s top money-producing sport.
“We change lives,” Harroz said in the meeting, referencing how the shift aligns with the goals of the university’s strategic plan. “And the role of athletics plays a critical role in the life of a university. It is additive well beyond the playing fields."
