Illinois alumnus Josh Whitman was hired as the University’s 14th permanent director of athletics on February 17, 2016. Now in his 10th year, Whitman owns the third-longest tenure among current Big Ten athletic directors and 10th-longest among the Autonomy 4. He has led an impressive effort to establish Fighting Illini Athletics among the nation's elite in both the competitive arena and the classroom.
Whitman has become a prominent voice in college athletics, highlighted by leadership roles in Big Ten and NCAA governance. In 2023, Whitman was appointed to a four-year term as the Big Ten representative to the NCAA Division I Council. In April 2024, Whitman was elected chair of the Council, a position he will conclude in the fall of 2025 with the implementation of the new NCAA Division I governance structure. As Council chair, Whitman also has been a voting member of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors, comprised primarily of presidents and chancellors from Division I institutions, and an ex officio member of the NCAA Board of Governors, the highest governing body of the NCAA.
From 2021-23 Whitman co-chaired the Big Ten’s Administrators’ Council and served on the Conference’s Joint Group Executive Committee. In addition, he represented the Big Ten on the Rose Bowl Management Committee through 2023.
Illinois is coming off the most successful season of Whitman’s tenure in in 2024-25, garnering a No. 31 final ranking in the Learfield Directors’ Cup, the program’s highest finish in the last 10 years. Fifteen Illini teams combined to earn 731.5 points, eclipsing the previous high under Whitman by nearly 132 points, and marking the highest point total for the department since the 2011-12 season.
Last year, for the first time in nearly 25 years – and only the second time in school history – the Illini football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball programs all were ranked in the Top 25 at the same time. In addition, Illinois was one of only five schools in the country to win a postseason bowl game and win games in both the men’s and women’s NCAA Basketball Tournaments. Of those five schools, Whitman is the only current athletic director to have hired all three of the involved head coaches.
Also in 2024-25, women’s track and field recorded a pair of top-10 national finishes, volleyball returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021, men’s golf won its seventh NCAA Regional championship, wrestling placed 10th nationally, and men’s gymnastics finished sixth. In all, 16 Illini programs participated in postseason competition. Individually, wrestler Lucas Byrd claimed the national championship at 133 lbs.
Those many accomplishments followed a strong 2023-24 campaign that saw the Fighting Illini win a total of four Big Ten championships in baseball (regular season), men’s basketball (tournament), women’s indoor track & field, and men’s gymnastics (regular season), the most for Illinois Athletics since 2015. Additionally, the men’s golf program won the NCAA Regional title en route to yet another top-5 NCAA finish, women’s basketball claimed the crown in the inaugural Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT), and two Illini student-athletes brought home individual NCAA championships.
Nowhere has Whitman’s influence 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 23 wins and two New Year’s bowl games in the last three seasons.
In 2024-25, Bielema’s fourth year at the helm, Illinois tied its single-season wins record, becoming just the fifth team in the 134-year history of the program to win 10 games. The season culminated with a victory 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 field has been accompanied by a rapid rise in fan enthusiasm. Illinois features the highest three-season attendance growth in all of college football, improving by more than 19,000 in that span and reaching an average of 54,570 in 2024, its highest mark in 15 years. Highlighting those numbers were sellout crowds to watch wins over No. 19 Kansas and the signature 100th-anniversary triumph over No. 24 Michigan.
Similar to 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 six seasons, Underwood’s Illini have posted the best record in Big Ten play while winning conference titles in three of the last five years. 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 12 nationally and 43 sellouts over the last four seasons. The men’s basketball program has set Illinois revenue records in four consecutive seasons while becoming one of the Big Ten’s most profitable programs.
Men’s Basketball won 22 games in 2024-25, appearing in the NCAA Tournament for the fifth consecutive year, advancing to the Second Round, and ending the year ranked 17th in kenpom. Illinois recorded its sixth-straight 20-win regular season, standing as one of just four programs nationally to carry such a streak.
That followed a banner year for the program in 2023-24, when it advanced to the NCAA Elite Eight for the first time since 2005. The team captured its second Big Ten Tournament title in four years and totaled 29 victories to mark the third-winningest season in school history. Illinois ended the year at No. 6 in the AP poll, its second 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. Last season, Women’s Basketball tied its school record with 21 regular-season wins and finished with 22 victories, tied for the third-winningest season in school history. Illinois earned its second NCAA Tournament appearance in three years under Green and posted its first Tournament win in the last 25 years, advancing to the NCAA Second Round.
In total during Whitman’s tenure, Illinois teams have made 110 NCAA postseason appearances, highlighted by 31 teams finishing in the top 16 nationally and seven finishing in the nation’s top four. In addition, nine Illinois student-athletes have captured 11 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 and field athlete Olivia Howell, 2023; men’s gymnast Tate Costa and women’s track and field athlete Rose Yeboah, 2024; and wrestler Lucas Byrd, 2025).
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.
Under Whitman’s leadership, Illinois is amid eight consecutive fiscal years of recording more than $30 million in new gift commitments (FY18 through FY25), with three consecutive years (FY18 through FY20) exceeding $40 million. In FY25, Illinois secured more than $150 million in new gifts, shattering the program’s record. As part of that record-breaking number in FY25, I FUND giving totaled a record $14.1 million, an 85% increase from the previous year.
In 2016, Whitman announced the creation of the University’s Athletics Hall of Fame, which will induct its ninth class in the fall of 2025. 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.
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.
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 2025-26 academic year with a school-record streak of 30-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 47 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 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.
Whitman is married to Hope Whitman. They have two children: a daughter Tate, who is nine, and a seven-year-old son, Will. The Whitmans have become engaged in several Champaign-Urbana community organizations, including United Way, Champaign County Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for Children, 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 2025
