Illinois has decided to keep the person who has done as much as anyone to reshape the trajectory of Fighting Illini athletics right where he is, and it paid up to do it.
The University of Illinois board of trustees approved a new contract for athletic director Josh Whitman at its meeting this week, tying him to Champaign through 2036 in a deal worth more than $31 million over the next 10 years. It is the fifth time Whitman's contract has been amended since he took the job in 2016, and the raise that comes with it is significant.
Whitman will make $2.15 million during the 2026-27 school year, a bump of more than 40 percent over his previous salary. From there, the deal is built to keep climbing. He is scheduled for $100,000 raises annually, followed by a $200,000 jump to $3.15 million in the final year of the agreement. Illinois also built in a $500,000 retention bonus for each June 30 that Whitman remains on the job, plus up to $500,000 in additional annual incentives tied to performance goals set by the university chancellor.
Whitman has inked four extensions since arriving to lead Illini athletics, and there is a mechanism in his latest deal to keep him in Champaign even longer.
The contract includes three automatic one-year extensions that would run through 2039 if certain Illini football and men's basketball performance measures are met. The new deal includes $26.1 million in total compensation, and $31.1 million with annual retention bonuses, over the life of the deal.
For anyone who has followed what Whitman has built, the investment tracks. Whitman is an Illinois guy through and through, a standout tight end for the Illini in the 1990s who returned to his alma mater after a brief pro career and a run working inside the athletic department. He graduated with a finance degree and later earned his law degree from Illinois, and he was hired as the school's 14th permanent director of athletics in February of 2016.
The move that defines his tenure came in December of 2020, when Whitman hired Bret Bielema away from the New York Giants staff to run the football program. That bet has paid off in a big way. Bielema went 9-4 this past season, capped by a 30-28 win over Tennessee in the Music City Bowl, and now owns 37 wins and 23 Big Ten victories across his first five years in Champaign, along with bowl wins in the 2024 Citrus Bowl and the 2025 Music City Bowl with the program trajectory pointing upwards - without question.
Whitman locked Bielema into a new six-year deal through 2030 last May, part of a broader push to secure the school's top coaches. He did the same on the basketball side with Brad Underwood. Now the school has stepped up to do the same for the man responsible for some of the most impactful hires in the school's history.
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