'He’s known as the Godfather. He calls me the Don': How Chris Del Conte & Joe Castiglione shook up college football
Berry TramelOklahoman
DALLAS — Joe Castiglione and Chris Del Conte chat often. Once or twice a week. Sometimes business, sometimes not.
Either way, they end every phone call with the same farewell.
“I love you.”
Hundreds of thousands of OU and Texas fans just got nauseated. Bad enough that they swore allegiance in defecting together from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference, but now the dueling athletic directors are getting all mushy.
Never fear. There will be no kisses on the cheek at midfield Saturday in the Cotton Bowl. No exchanges of cultural gifts. The Sooners and Longhorns will arrive ready to rumble, with switchblades and crow bars, trying to reach the opponent end zone and keep the infidels from doing the same.
But the athletic directors will keep it cordial. It’s a business thing; OU and Texas are partners more than ever before. And it’s an Italian thing.
“We joked, we’re the only two Italians that work in college athletics,” Del Conte said. “He’s known as the Godfather. He calls me the Don.”
Castiglione has been on the OU job for 23 years. Del Conte has ridden herd on UT’s Forty Acres only since 2017, after eight years as athletic director at Texas Christian.
But they’ve been friends for decades. They share common values, both being Catholic, and talk shop and home with equal ease, despite many differences. Age. Geography. Career track.
Castiglione and Del Conte are 10½ years apart in age (Del Conte is 53; Castiglione turns 64 Friday). Castiglione grew up in Fort Lauderdale and graduated from Maryland; Del Conte grew up in Taos, New Mexico, and graduated from Cal-Santa Barbara. Del Conte has worked at six schools since OU hired Castiglione.
Castiglione 20 years ago tried to hire Del Conte to join him at OU. That never worked out, and eventually they became peers.
“He was instrumental in me getting the job at Rice” in 2006, Del Conte said. “I got that job because of him. When I got to Texas, he said, ‘Oh boy, here we go.’”
Castiglione and Del Conte are two of college sports’ power brokers, and that’s completely evident by the summer news that OU and Texas are SEC-bound. Few events of the 21st century have shaken NCAA sports as much as the Sooners and Longhorns joining the most football-dominant conference.
The Big 12 has steadied itself and charted a new and frankly exciting course. But the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast and Pac-12 conferences were taken aback by the territorial power grab.
Joe C. and CDC — each has a shortened moniker known coast to coast — had much help in making the conference realignment decision that shook the sports world. Both schools have relatively new presidents that were heavily involved. Regents were heavily involved. I assume prominent donors, at least in Texas, played a part. At least one coach, OU’s Lincoln Riley, was part of the process.
But the driving forces had to be the Godfather and the Don.
“We’ve been friends for quite a long time,” Castiglione said. “I think it (the relationship) has probably strengthened through our most recent move. But it was always very, very strong. He's a special guy.”
The Italian Connection is only fitting, since ancestors Donnie Duncan of OU and DeLoss Dodds of Texas were the primary instigators of forming the Big 12 in 1994. So OU-Texas collaboration in conference realignment is nothing new.
And Joe C. and CDC came by it honest. Castiglione was athletic director at Missouri when the Big 12 formed. Del Conte was athletic director at TCU when the Horned Frogs earned their way to a Big 12 invitation.
Now they are leading their schools out of the Big 12. And sticking together.
Both Castiglione and Del Conte are determined to keep all SEC talk to a minimum. No discussion of who started what, or who contacted who when. Just know for now that the Sooners and Longhorns are locked arm in arm as business partners, no matter what you might see Saturday on the Cotton Bowl turf or around Fair Park.
“We have a well over 100-year history between the two schools,” Castiglione said. “The Red River rivalry is very important to both institutions, and not just in football, but obviously it's carried through all the common sports we sponsor. It's a huge part of our year.
“It's evocative in terms of the way it engages fans, literally across the world, especially for this football game. One of the unique traditions in all of sports, not just college football.
“There's just so many reasons why the relationship matters to both schools in unique ways, the importance of keeping this game and this rivalry. We've had a long-standing tradition of playing the game in Dallas and it's served us both very, very well.”
Del Conte, hired in December 2017, is relatively new to the rivalry. He’s been the UT athletic director for only two authentic OU-Texas games, 2018 and 2019 — the pandemic reduced Cotton Bowl capacity to 25 percent a year ago, and the 2018 Big 12 Championship Game was an alternate universe, played over in Arlington — but raves about the spectacle.
“We know it’s a massive weekend,” Del Conte said. “We haven’t been on Sooner soil (for football) since I think 1922. So the State Fair, everything about it, it’s a game where emotions run deep, and that’s what makes this rivalry so great.”
Del Conte said he never would consider moving the game to campuses — “not on my watch” — and says he treasures the tradition.
“Think about a decade of OU not playing Nebraska,” Del Conte said. “Shame on us not playing (Texas) A&M for 10 years.
“I could never imagine not playing Oklahoma. This game has been special for these two states for so long. We started playing at the State Fair in ‘32 (actually 1929).
“Think through what that means. The games have played historical significance. Bound and determined, deep-rooted rivals. Our culture vs. your culture. Our fight song vs. your fight song. Our band vs. your band.
“This is what the University of Texas is, this is what the University of Oklahoma is. It’s passed down from generation to generation.”
The rivalry itself has tied these schools together for almost a century.
While conference realignment tore asunder other great rivalries — Texas-Arkansas, OU-Nebraska, A&M-Texas — conference realignment branded the Sooners and Longhorns together.
Twenty-five years ago, the formation of the Big 12 sent OU and Texas into the same boardroom. No longer were they discussing just the details about a solitary football game each October, but every element of administration, from revenues to eligibility to rules.
Joe C. said OU and Texas don’t always vote together on issues, and the Sooners joined the rest of the Big 12 in absolute alarm at The Longhorn Network, but the relationship never fractured.
And now it’s stronger than ever.
