Mark Taurisani is in his sixth season on the Fighting Illini football staff in 2026, overseeing the administrative aspects of the football program and head coach Bret Bielema. He was promoted to Associate Athletics Director/Chief of Staff in 2024 after previously serving as Assistant Athletics Director/Chief of Staff from 2021-23.

Taurisani has helped elevate Illinois to new expectations in his first five seasons in Champaign, alongside head coach Bret Bielema. The Illini have 37 wins, 23 Big Ten victories, and bowl victories in the 2024 Cheez-It Citrus Bowl and 2025 Liberty Mutual Music City Bowl since Taurisani's arrival in 2021. Illinois' success has continued to even greater heights over the last two seasons with 19 wins from 2024-25, setting the Illinois record for wins in a two-year period and achieving the first back-to-back 9+-win seasons in program history.

Taurisani has helped Bielema set the Illinois records for wins in a season (10, 2024), bowl victories coached (3), bowl games coached (2), and wins in a head coach's first five seasons (37). Bielema is the first head coach in Illinois history to win bowl games in back-to-back seasons, as Illinois beat #14 South Carolina in the 2024 Cheez-It Citrus Bowl and #23 Tennessee in the 2025 Liberty Mutual Music City Bowl for the first two victories over SEC opponents in Illinois history. The lllini finished the 2024 season ranked #16 in the nation (AP/Coaches), then finished #25 in 2025 (Coaches). 

The Fighting Illini program has enjoyed continued appearances in the AP Top 25, Coaches Polls, and College Football Playoff rankings, three bowl games, three national award finalists, 14 All-Americans, and 12 NFL Draft picks since Taurisani's arrival. Illinois has had three national award finalists and seven top-100 draft picks during Taurisani's tenure. Jer'Zhan Newton (2023, Nagurski), Chase Brown (2022, Doak), and Devon Witherspoon (2022, Thorpe) gave Illinois three finalists in National College Football Awards Association awards over a two-year span for the first time since 1994-95, while Illinois was one of five schools with three or more players drafted in the first three rounds in the 2023 and 2024 NFL Drafts, along with Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, and Penn State. 

Taurisani has worked with Bielema in all of his 17 years as a head coach - helping Bielema-coached teams to 13 bowl games - and came to Illinois after three seasons as the Director of Operations for the Michigan football program. He spent five seasons with Bielema at Arkansas, where he worked as Director of Football Operations, including the last four as Assistant Athletics Director. Prior to his stop in Fayetteville, Taurisani spent seven seasons at Wisconsin, including the final four as Director of Football Operations. He had been the football operations coordinator in 2008-09, following two seasons as an operations assistant in 2006-07. 

In total, Taurisani has coordinated 15 bowl trips and two Big Ten Championship Game trips throughout his career, and has served as a member of the Rose Bowl Advisory Committee since 2010. At Wisconsin, he was part of three Big Ten Championship-winning teams and seven bowl trips, including the 2010, 2011, and 2012 Rose Bowls.

A native of Utica, New York, Taurisani graduated from State University of New York at Fredonia in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in sports and exercise, earning all-conference first team honors as captain of the baseball team. He spent the summer of 2005 as a training camp assistant with the Seattle Seahawks, which went on to win the NFC and appear in Super Bowl XL. Taurisani earned a master’s degree in sport administration from Louisville in 2005.

Taurisani and his wife, Tara, have three daughters, Rose, Avery, and Matea.