Thad Turnipseed, the executive director of football administration at Oklahoma, has left the program, according to multiple reports. His bio has already been removed from OU's online directory.
“Thad Turnipseed is no longer employed at the university. He has notified Coach Venables that he intends to spend more time with his family,” the official told SoonerScoop.com, who first reported the story Thursday evening.
Turnipseed was one of the numerous staffers who joined Brent Venables from Clemson, and arguably the most important of the bunch.
“He’s a critical part,” Sooners coach Brent Venables said of Turnipseed’s role in the program last year. “He’s got vision. He’s four, five and six steps ahead with everything. He anticipates both programmatically, facility, structurally, and he knows how to get it done both on the coaching side of how a football home — how it all works organically. He knows what all that looks like in the weeds.”
Turnipseed's most visible impact was spearheading Oklahoma's new $175 million, all-in-one football operations facility, which regents approved earlier this year.
Turnipseed worked in construction before joining Alabama as director of athletic facilities in 2002. He eventually rose to associate AD for special projects, then joined Clemson's staff, where as director of football recruiting and external affairs where his purview oversaw everything from the construction of Clemson's state-of-the-art facility, to recruiting, to football marketing, to budgeting.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.