University of Minnesota Athletic Director Mark Coyle signed a two-year contract extension that was approved by the Minnesota Board of Regents on Thursday that will keep him as the Gophers AD through June 2032. Coyle’s original contract was set to expire at the end of 2023. He will now make $2 million dollars this year in base salary and will receive a $100,000 raise in each following year of the contract. He also will receive a one-time $845,000 longevity bonus on June 30th, 2026 with additional
$250,000 bonus payments on June 30, 2027 and 2028. That number raises to $300,000 for the final four years of the contract.
If Coyle is fired without cause his buyout is $13.5 million this summer, $11.5 million in 2027, $9.4 million in 2028, $7.2 million in 2029, $4.9 million in 2030 and $2.5 million in 2031. Coyle only has to pay a $500,000 buyout if he leaves on his own between now and 2030, and there is no buyout if Coyle leaves in 2023 or later. The contract does state that on or before August 1, 2030 the parties will use their best efforts to negotiate a contract renewal, extension, or new contract.
Coyle will be in his 10th year as the AD for the Gophers this season. Under his watch the Gophers academic standings have risen significantly. Gopher student-athletes posted a school record cumulative GPA of 3.48 in the 2025-26 academic year, and Minnesota has produced 313 College Sports Communicators Academic All-District selections and 92 College Sports Communicators Academic All-Americans during Coyle’s helm. Minnesota now has 218 all-time CSC Academic All-Americans, a total that ranks tenth all-time in Academic All-America honorees.
In the most recent results, Minnesota has a 93 percent Graduation Success Rate (GSR). Under Coyle’s leadership, Minnesota has now recorded the eight highest GSR statistics in school history during the last eight years with a school-record 96 percent mark in 2021, 95 percent in 2023 and 2024, 94 percent in 2022, 2020 and 2019 and a 93 percent rate in 2018 and 2025.
Minnesota has won 26 conference championships (18 regular-season and eight postseason) and 22 individual NCAA national championships under Coyle’s direction. Coyle and head football coach P.J. Fleck, who enter their tenth season together in 2026, form the longest-tenured athletics director/head coach partnership in the Big Ten and the second longest-tenured partnership in the nation.
Minnesota currently ranks 18th out of 258 universities in the Learfield Directors’ Cup race, which measures broad-based athletics success. That puts Minnesota in the top seven percent of all Division I athletics departments nationwide.
