Mike Bobinski Earns Contract Extension

The Purdue Board of Trustees announced late last week that Purdue Athletics Director Mike Bobinski has been given a contract extension. The deal was approved by the full board and presumably Bobinski himself has singed on the dotted line by now.

The deal is for an additional five years which will take Bobinski through June 2028. This means that Bobinski will be at the helm as the Big Ten Conference expands to 18 teams at the start of next season.

For those that don’t remember Bobisnki’s story, he came to Purdue from Georgia Tech back in 2016. He was hired at the tail end of the Darrell Hazell era when things were at their worst for Purdue football. It wasn’t a good situation and frankly Purdue was lucky to find a guy like Bobisnki to come in and whip things into shape. Hazell was fired and Jeff Brohm was brought in. This saw attendance increase from an average of 34.4K to 57K as of 2022. That is just a mind boggling improvement and translates into millions upon millions of dollars. Speaking of millions of dollars, from the Purdue release:

Purdue Athletics saw a record-breaking $83 million raised by the John Purdue Club in 2022, while the growth of the annual fund has increased from $6.75 million in 2018 to a record-setting $13.5 million in 2023.

More than $100 million in facility upgrades, renovations and additions have been completed during Bobinski’s tenure.

Those numbers alone would make any administrator happy. I’m not trying to speculate (he says as he wildly speculates), but this would seem to be the end of the line for Bobinski. Right now he’s 65 years old and will be 70 by the time the contract extension ends. I hope he’s able to go out a winner and enjoy retirement with family, friends, and other loved ones. Until then? Let’s get some championships!