NORMAN — OU athletic director Joe Castiglione won’t start many arguments with his take on the last few years in college athletics.

“The most chaotic and disruptive environment in the history of college athletics, period,” Castiglione said. “That is undisputed. People can take whatever but there’s never been a period of time like we’ve seen. We’ve seen change, and some that have been significant changes at certain points in time, but all pale in comparison to what we’re going through now.”

Castiglione — as he navigates the Sooners’ program through the sea changes of conference realignment, athletes flooding the transfer portal and usage of name, image and likeness (NIL) — has worked to not only react to changes in the landscape but anticipate coming changes.

That’s one of the reasons for the creation of OU’s new Athlete Services Division, which was announced Thursday.

The first-of-its-kind division is geared toward building on the work OU has done in building an NIL infrastructure that go far beyond the collectives that popped up around the country in the wake of the virtually unregulated NIL market opening a little more than two years ago.

The new division is aimed at helping athletes “understand and command the value of their personal brand,” educating businesses about NIL, assisting athletes in understanding how to fulfill NIL agreements, creating content, growing their media presence and educating in applicable laws and NCAA compliance.

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The creation of the division expands OU’s existing partnership with Altius Sports Partners, which began in March 2022.

Altius has worked with programs around the country, offering consulting to athletic departments on NIL issues. Some schools have used Altius for expanded services, offering a more personalized and dedicated approach.

The creation of OU’s ASD is another significant step forward, said Andrew Donovan, executive vice president of Altius Sports Partners College.

“The change that we’re seeing — we’re not going to reverse course as an industry,” Donovan said. “And whether change is dictated by federal legislation, through litigation, through the National Labor Relations Board or some other method, things are going to continue to evolve.

“The way I try to approach this is take what we know about the current system, the structure of campus and the operations of campus, and try to start to think a little bit differently about how you’re going to approach this. Have respect and appreciation for where we’ve been as an industry and what the collegiate model represents but have an open-mindedness to the fact that change is OK.

"At the end of the day, the changes we’re talking about is in large part meant to benefit the 18-to-22-year-olds we’re serving. Being open to that, which obviously Oklahoma is through an initiative like this, and trying to be positive about how you’re evaluating your adjustment to that change is the way I approach this role and certainly I would say Oklahoma is approaching the change as well.”

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OU Executive Associate Athletics Director for NIL and Operational Advancement Toby Baldwin will coordinate the division’s athlete-facing education, advocacy and transactional services.

An Altius athlete revenue analyst will focus on optimizing athlete revenue streams while also serving as a liaison to coaches and other stakeholders in the department.

Castiglione emphasized that OU won’t be involved in brokering NIL deals.

While NIL is the most notable element to the division, Castiglione emphasized that it goes beyond that.

“It really transcends NIL because it’s focusing on a much more comprehensive and personalized support for athletes so it’s requiring us to invest more resources to help them and then by helping them we’re helping them help themselves,” Castiglione said.

The division is designed to offer experienced professionals to support athletes and identify how to maximize and diversify revenue opportunities for athletes, overall strategic alignment, athlete education, adaptability to the changing landscape of college athletics and to leverage Altius’ national perspective with OU’s athletics department’s  local knowledge.

“We know that our efforts in the past, while very good, need to continue to grow too,” Castiglione said. “We just wanted to think proactively of where we believe this particular world is going and not just react to an immediate, incremental next step, it’s what can we do to really help our athletes be more successful in this space.

“This is more of a skate-where-the-puck-is-going vision than just waiting to see how things evolve. There are things that we know, there are things that we don’t yet know, and there are things in some categories that haven’t yet been well-defined but we know something out of the world of the unknowns will present itself in the not-too-distant future, so we think this model’s going to be the right structure for us to be best positioned to evolve and pivot and adapt to the world going forward.”

Donovan equates what athletic departments have gone through in recent years to a carnival game.

“If you think about how a lot of schools have approached this thus far, it’s a game of Whac-A-Mole,” Donovan said. “There’s just so much involved in this space and it’s such a competitive space given the nexus to recruiting and retention of athletes that you have schools that have added responsibilities to existing athletic department staff members to manage the NIL space, you have other schools that have hired individuals to focus on NIL, but you haven’t really seen an approach where multiple individuals have been put into place for the concerted effort of managing athlete-revenue opportunities, athlete growth, the commercial sector as it relates to athletes’ growing rights.

“That’s really the backdrop of what we’re doing with the Athlete Services Department and where we saw this going for a long, long time.”

More: Will OU football bounce back in 2023? Here are our game-by-game predictions for Sooners

OU vs. Arkansas State

KICKOFF: 11 a.m. Saturday at Owen Field in Norman (ESPN)

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OU launches Athlete Services Division to bolster NIL opportunities