Staff Directory
- Title:
- Director of Athletics
- Email:
- illiniad
- Alma Mater:
- Illinois '01
Illinois alumnus Josh Whitman was hired as the University’s 14th permanent director of athletics on February 17, 2016. Now in his 11th year, Whitman is the dean of Big Ten athletic directors and owns the fourth-longest tenure among the Autonomy 4. He has led an impressive effort to establish Illinois among the nation's elite in both the competitive arena and the classroom. Whitman inked a long-term contract extension in July 2026 that will keep him in charge of Fighting Illini Athletics through 2036 with the ability to extend through 2039.
Whitman has become a prominent voice in college athletics, highlighted by leadership roles in Big Ten and NCAA governance. Whitman is currently in his third year serving as chair of the NCAA Division I Cabinet and its predecessor, the Division I Council, which he first joined in 2023. Also with the NCAA, he is a member of the Division I Board of Directors, comprised primarily of presidents and chancellors from Division I institutions, and the Board of Governors, the highest governing body of the NCAA. Previously, Whitman co-chaired the Big Ten’s Administrators’ Council and served on the Conference’s Joint Group Executive Committee, with a two-year term that concluded in 2023.
Illinois Athletics enters the 2026-27 season on the heels of arguably its most successful four-year stretch in program history, led by achievements in the revenue-producing sports of football and basketball. Over the last two seasons, Illinois is the only school in the country in back-to-back years whose football team won a postseason bowl game while its men’s and women’s basketball teams both won NCAA Tournament games.
Illinois Football has won a school-record 19 games over the last two seasons, including consecutive bowl victories over SEC opponents, and has recorded three 8-plus win regular seasons in the last four years. Illinois Men’s Basketball advanced to the NCAA Final Four in 2026 for the first time in 21 years, which followed a trip to the Elite Eight in 2024. The Fighting Illini are the winningest team in Big Ten play this decade. Illinois Women’s Basketball has been to the postseason in each of the last four seasons, highlighted by NCAA Tournament wins in each of the last two seasons for the first time in more than 25 years and the inaugural WBIT title in 2024.
In addition, women’s track and field has recorded four consecutive Top 10 national finishes, including a third-place finish at the 2026 NCAA Indoor Championships, the highest finish in team history. Illinois also recorded Top 15 national finishes last season in men’s tennis, men’s golf, wrestling, and men’s gymnastics, while soccer and women’s golf qualified for NCAA postseason play as well. Illinois earned a No. 31 final ranking in the 2025-26 Learfield Directors’ Cup, equaling the previous year’s placement to match the highest finish of the Whitman era.
Nowhere has Whitman’s influence across the athletics department been felt more than on the gridiron. An Illini letterman himself, Whitman has helped engineer the football team’s return to national prominence, spearheaded by his hiring of three-time Big Ten champion head coach Bret Bielema in December of 2020 that has led to 32 wins and three New Year’s bowl games in the last four seasons.
The 2025 Illini squad won nine games, highlighted by a second straight New Year’s bowl win with a victory over Tennessee in the Liberty Mutual Music City Bowl in Nashville. With the win, Bielema became the first coach in school history to win back-to-back bowl games.
That followed the sterling 2024 season when Illinois tied its single-season wins record, becoming just the fifth team in the 135-year history of the program to win 10 games. The year culminated with a victory over South Carolina in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl in Orlando, the Illini’s first win in a New Year’s bowl game since 1989. Illinois ended the year ranked No. 16 in the final Associated Press poll, its highest finish since 2001, to accompany an appearance in the final College Football Playoff ranking for the first time in school history.
The magical season will be remembered beyond the games, as the campus and community joined together for a season-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of historic Memorial Stadium. The tribute culminated with a stadium rededication ceremony and subsequent victory over Michigan in front of a sold-out crowd, with the Illini receiving national acclaim for the throwback helmets and jerseys that re-created the look of the famed Red Grange in 1924.
The turnaround on the football field has been accompanied by a rapid rise in fan enthusiasm. Illinois features the highest four-season attendance growth in all of college football, improving by more than 19,000 in that span and reaching an average of 58,350 in 2025, its highest mark in 16 years. Highlighting those numbers were sellout crowds to watch the signature 100th-anniversary triumph over No. 24 Michigan in 2024 and four consecutive sellouts in 2025, the longest such streak since 2009.
Like his imprint on the gridiron, Whitman also prompted a national resurgence in men’s basketball that began with his 2017 hiring of head coach Brad Underwood, widely considered one of college basketball’s best hires over the last decade. During the last seven seasons, Underwood’s Illini have posted the best record in Big Ten play while winning three conference titles and making six-straight NCAA Tournament appearances. At the same time, State Farm Center has become one of the most feared home courts in college basketball, with average attendance in the top 13 nationally and a total of 59 sellouts. The men’s basketball program has set Illinois revenue records in five consecutive seasons while becoming one of the Big Ten’s most profitable programs.
Illinois is coming off the best NCAA Tournament performance of Underwood's tenure, winning all four games in the South Regional by double figures to earn a spot in the 2026 Final Four. It marked the program's first Final Four appearance since 2005, just its third in the modern era, and the sixth in school history.
The Illini finished with a 28-9 record, the 28 wins marking the fourth-most in school history. Illinois extended its active streak to seven straight 20-win regular seasons and was Big Ten runner-up at 15-5, with the 15 league wins tying the second-most in program history. Illinois ended the year at No. 5 in the AP poll, its third top-10 final ranking of the Underwood era.
Staying on the hardwood, Whitman’s hiring of Shauna Green in women’s basketball has ignited another turnaround in Fighting Illini Athletics. In 2022-23, Green’s first year at the helm, she led the team to a historic 15-win improvement, the best year-over-year change ever at Illinois and the third-largest in Big Ten history. Illinois won 22 games, the third-most victories in program history, and made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2003.
Green then led Illinois to its first postseason title in school history during her second season, 2023-24, as Illinois roared to the title of the NCAA’s first-ever WBIT. Women’s Basketball has finished with 22 victories in each of the last two years, tying the third-winningest seasons in school history. Green has led the Illini to three NCAA Tournament appearances in her four years, highlighted by wins the last two seasons to advance to the Round of 32 in 2025 and 2026.
In total during Whitman’s tenure, Illinois teams have made 124 NCAA postseason appearances, highlighted by 37 teams finishing in the top 16 nationally and nine finishing in the nation’s top four. In addition, 11 Illinois student-athletes have captured 13 individual national championships (wrestler Isaiah Martinez, 2016; men’s gymnast Brandon Ngai, 2016; men’s gymnast Alex Diab, 2018 and 2019; men’s gymnast Ian Skirkey, 2021; Skirkey, fellow men’s gymnast Ashton Anaya, and women’s track athlete Olivia Howell, 2023; men’s gymnast Tate Costa and women’s field athlete Rose Yeboah, 2024; wrestler Lucas Byrd, 2025; women’s field athlete Sophia Beckmon and men’s gymnast Brandon Dang, 2026).
Illinois has captured a total of 16 Big Ten titles under Whitman: men's golf (2016-19, 21-23), women's golf (2023), men's basketball (2022 regular season, 2021 & 2024 tournaments), men's tennis (2021 tournament), men's gymnastics (2024 regular season, 2018 tournament), baseball (2024 regular season), and women's track and field (2024 indoor).
Whitman has executed an aggressive facilities agenda since his hiring. The marquee building is the $79.2 million, 110,000-square-foot Henry Dale and Betty Smith Football Center, which was formally dedicated in October 2019. A multi-year renovation and expansion of the Ubben Basketball Complex was a $40 million project that finished in the fall of 2022 and was officially dedicated in February of 2023. Other completed projects include the $21 million Demirjian Park, home for the Illinois soccer and track and field programs that opened in the spring of 2021, and the $8 million Susan and Clint Atkins Baseball Training Center and $6 million Rex and Alice A. Martin Softball Training Center, both dedicated in October 2022.
To assist Illinois’ nationally ranked men’s and women’s golf programs, Whitman orchestrated the acquisition of the former Stone Creek Golf Club as part of a $15 million, multi-faceted gift of real estate to the University from long-time friends of Illinois Athletics, the Atkins family. The course, now rebranded the Atkins Golf Club at the University of Illinois, underwent extensive renovations using funds from a $5 million anonymous gift to provide Illinois Golf with a championship-caliber home. Atkins Golf Club served as a host site for the 2025 NCAA Men’s Golf Regional Championships, where Illinois captured its seventh regional crown.
To support this facility plan and various other strategic initiatives, Whitman has teamed with DIA’s Office of Athletic Development to achieve unprecedented success on the fundraising trail. Whitman’s arrival synchronized with the public launch and execution of the campus-wide With Illinois fundraising campaign. As part of the With Illinois campaign, DIA secured more than $321 million in fundraising production, easily surpassing its fundraising goal of $300 million. The campaign featured several of the largest single gifts in program history, including a $20 million donation from the H.D. Smith Foundation, led by brothers Dale and Chris Smith, to name Smith Football Center.
In 2025, Whitman spearheaded an exciting partnership with Illinois alumnus and Gies College of Business namesake Larry Gies, who made one of the largest single gifts in college athletics history when he pledged $100 million to support Fighting Illini Football and secure the long-term future of the University’s historic football stadium.
Illinois Athletics has set revenue records for four consecutive years, eclipsing $200 million in revenues for the first time in FY26. Based on NCAA reports, Illinois has experienced the greatest relative revenue growth of any Big Ten school during the ten years of Whitman’s tenure (Illinois revenues have grown 102% during that time, compared to an average of 71% growth across the conference). Included in those totals are three straight years of record ticket revenue, topped by $30.2 million during the 2025-26 season.
As college sports continue to modernize, Whitman has been instrumental in reaching multi-year agreements with Busey Bank as the inaugural jersey patch partner for Illinois Athletics and Caterpillar as the first corporate logo on the playing surface at Gies Memorial Stadium. Illinois has also signed a long-term extension with Nike for footwear, clothing and equipment, continuing a 30-plus year partnership.
In March 2025, Whitman testified in a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade on the future of college athletics. Whitman has also been a regular presence in Springfield, testifying in committee and working with state lawmakers on a variety of issues impacting college athletics, including name-image-likeness and sports gambling. In the summer of 2020, Whitman joined Governor J.B. Pritzker in State Farm Center while the Governor signed into law the Student-Athlete Endorsement Rights Act, the state’s inaugural NIL bill.
In 2016, Whitman announced the creation of the University’s Athletics Hall of Fame, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary with the induction of a star-studded class in the fall of 2026. In the winter of 2022, following an extensive community effort, the Illinois High School Association returned its Boys State Basketball Championship series back to State Farm Center after an absence of more than 25 years.
Whitman, a former Academic All-American at Illinois, emphasizes strong performance by Fighting Illini student-athletes in the classroom as well. In each year of his tenure, student-athletes have posted a combined GPA of above 3.12. Under Whitman’s leadership, the student-athlete population as a whole and individual teams have set school records for GPA, APR scores and GSR scores. Illini student-athletes enter the 2026-27 academic year with a school-record streak of 32-consecutive semesters with a combined GPA above 3.0.
At the time of his hiring in early 2016, Whitman, then at age 37, was the youngest athletics director in the Autonomy 5. Prior to returning to Illinois, Whitman, now 48 years old, spent nearly six years as an athletics director at two universities. He came to Champaign-Urbana following almost two years as director of athletics at Washington University in St. Louis, a nationally recognized NCAA Division III program with 19 varsity sports and approximately 500 student-athletes. Before joining Washington University, Whitman served four years as the director of athletics at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, another of the nation’s leading Division III programs. Combined at those two institutions, Whitman’s teams earned four national titles, 24 NCAA top-five team finishes and 34 conference championships.
Whitman has two Illinois degrees. He graduated with Bronze Tablet honors in 2001 while earning a bachelor’s degree in finance. In 2008, he graduated summa cum laude from the Illinois College of Law before serving as a judicial law clerk for the late Judge Michael Kanne on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. From 2005 to 2008, he worked for DIA and former Illini athletics director Ron Guenther in various administrative capacities.
On the gridiron for the Fighting Illini, Whitman played in 45 games from 1997-2000, catching 52 career passes and seven touchdowns. He was a two-time First Team Academic All-American and earned Honorable Mention All-Big Ten honors his senior season. He then spent parts of four seasons as a player in the National Football League, including stints with the San Diego Chargers, Miami Dolphins, Seattle Seahawks, and Buffalo Bills. Whitman, a native of West Lafayette, Ind., is a member of the Indiana Football Hall of Fame.
Prior to embarking on his career in athletics administration, Whitman practiced law in Washington, D.C., with Covington & Burling LLP, a firm with a preeminent sports practice that represents, among other clients, the National Football League. Whitman remains a licensed attorney and is a member of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics and the FBS Athletics Directors Association. He also served on the national board of directors for the Sports Lawyers Association from 2019-23.
Whitman’s leadership has earned national attention, highlighted in early 2018 when Sports Business Journal named him to its prestigious Forty Under 40 list. In July 2017, Whitman was selected Central Illinois Business Magazine’s Forty Under 40 Man of the Year. He was inducted in the Illinois Sports Hall of Fame in 2026.
Whitman is married to Hope Whitman. They have two children: a daughter Tate, who is 10, and an eight-year-old son, Will. The Whitmans have become engaged in several Champaign-Urbana community organizations, including the Rotary Club of Champaign, United Way of Champaign County, Champaign County Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for Children, the Stephens Family YMCA, Courage Connection, Coaches vs. Cancer, and the Tom Jones Challenger League. Whitman has been recognized as a Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Club of Champaign, which also honored he and Hope with its Service Above Self Award in 2025. Whitman was selected as the 2023 Distinguished Citizen by the Prairieland Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He and Hope are members of the I FUND’s Loyalty Circle and made a significant gift to the Smith Football Center to honor football alumni inside the facility.
Updated August 2026
