O’Brien Field at Eastern Illinois was last renovated in 1990 through a $2 million project to add offices, meeting rooms and training room facilities. (Photo by Barry Bottino, PrairieStatePigskin.com)
By Barry Bottino
When Mark Wilson took over 22 years ago as the athletic director at Tennessee Tech, he toured O’Brien Field – the Eastern Illinois football stadium – and other facilities on a visit.
When Wilson takes over Sept. 1 as EIU’s new athletic director, he will encounter a similar O’Brien venue.
“The football facilities under O’Brien are the same as they were when I first toured there in 2004 when I arrived in the Ohio Valley Conference,” he told Prairie State Pigskin.
EIU’s home field underwent a $2 million renovation in 1999, adding coaches’ offices, meeting and video rooms, along with an expanded weight room and training room facilities.
A key part of Wilson’s priorities will be to strategize how to update the space underneath O’Brien’s west stands.
“We’ll probably look at the building a football operations center somewhere adjacent to the stadium,” he said. “That would allow us to expand and use the space under the stadium that is used by football for sports medicine and some of the other programs.”
Any future plans, however, will involve a number of questions — and voices from throughout the EIU and Coles County communities.
“We would have to see what the costs are, can we fund it and what does it look like,” Wilson said.
For 21 years, Wilson served as TTU’s athletic director before resigning in 2025. Taking over at EIU, he said, provided the opportunity to lead an athletics program that “Tennessee Tech has been chasing.”
In the 17 times the OVC has awarded the Commissioner’s Cup for overall athletic excellence, EIU has won four times. TTU has never won the Cup.
“I’ve always had great respect for them competitively, but also academically,” he said.
Two reasons for Wilson’s respect for EIU athletics are former AD Tom Michael and head football coach Chris Wilkerson.
Michael served at EIU for 12 years before departing in May to return to the University of Illinois – his alma mater – as deputy director of athletics. “Tom Michael left a really solid foundation,” Wilson said. “We became very close colleagues” while working at their respective OVC universities.
In Wilkerson, EIU has a football alum guiding the program. Entering his fifth season with the Panthers this fall, the head coach has produced a 16-30 record, including 9-18 in OVC play.
“Chris Wilkerson is an excellent football coach, but he’s a better man,” Wilson said. “I can tell that already from the interactions I’ve had with him. Some of those observations were made from being on the other sideline and watching how he coaches and interacts with his student-athletes.”
Wilson added that his top priority is for all EIU student-athletes to leave campus with “a diploma in their left hand and a championship ring on their right.”
Barry Bottino is a co-founder of Prairie State Pigskin and a 19-year veteran of three Illinois newspapers. He has covered college athletics since 1995.
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