Butch Thompson was named Auburn's head baseball coach on October 22, 2015 and enters his 11th season at the helm of the program in 2026. 

Recently hitting his 10-year mark with the program, Thompson is not only the third longest-tenured coach in program history, but also the third winningest with 324 wins.

After guiding the Tigers to a record-setting season in 2025 that saw multiple single-game and series attendance records as well as the fourth straight single-season attendance record and culminated with the first home Super Regional in program history, Thompson signed a contract extension that will keep him with the program through at least 2031.

A native of Amory, Miss., Thompson has coached 34 Division I All-Americans and 54 all-conference performers, including six All-SEC honorees in 2025. He has seen 25 of his former pitchers make their MLB debut, including 19 since 2014. Thompson has also turned 47 pitchers who went undrafted out of high school into MLB draft picks, a list highlighted by the No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft in Casey Mize and five hurlers who were taken in both the 2022 and 2025 MLB Drafts.

Thompson has had 49 players drafted in his Auburn tenure, including 25 in the top 10 rounds, a record five of which went in the 2025 MLB Draft. The 2025 draft marked the seventh straight season multiple players were selected in the top 10 rounds - Ike Irish (1st), Eric Snow (6th), Dylan Watts (7th), Cam Tilly (7th), Samuel Dutton (10th) - continuing the longest such streak in program history. The Tigers have also had at least one player drafted in the top five rounds for a record 10 straight seasons under Thompson. 

Along with his pitching pedigree, Thompson is also considered one of the top recruiters in the country. Since 2003, he has secured 18 recruiting classes that were ranked in the top 10 by either Baseball America or Perfect Game, including four ranked in the top five on National Signing Day. 

In 33 years of coaching at the collegiate level, including 24 in the Southeastern Conference, Thompson has coached nine College World Series participants, including leading the Tigers to the program's first trip to the College World Series in 22 years in 2019 and taking the team back for the second time in three postseasons in 2022. Thompson has also coached one national champion and a national runner-up, won nine conference championships and made 20 postseason appearances. 

Following the previously mentioned 2025 season, Thompson was named the American Baseball Coaches Association Southeast Region Coach of the Year, joining Hal Baird (1994) as the only other coach in program history to earn the distinction. He has also been named the 2006 Fellowship of Christian Athletes SEC Coach of the Year while at Auburn and the 2014 Baseball America and ABCA National Assistant Coach of the Year while at Mississippi State.

Highlighting Thompson's 10 seasons at Auburn, he has led the Tigers to six NCAA Tournament appearances in the last eight postseasons, including the pair of College World Series appearances, and has taken the program to four of the five Super Regionals in program history (2018, 2019, 2022, 2025). His four regional championships are the mosy by a head coach in program history. Along with all of the postseason success, Thompson's teams have finished seven of the last nine seasons ranked in the top 25, including top-10 marks on four occasions. 

After going 12-3 in league play at Plainsman Park in 2025 and finishing the regular season as one of four SEC teams to win seven or more conference series, the Tigers matched a program record by earning the No. 4 national seed for the NCAA Tournament, marking the third time in the last four seasons the program had been selected as a regional host. Auburn is one of seven programs in the country, including three from the SEC, to host at least three times in the last four years. 

Including the team's 17-13 SEC record a year ago, which matched the 2023 team for the most SEC wins since 2010 (20), Thompson has guided Auburn to 15 or more league wins in five of the last eight seasons, including three of the last four. Prior to Thompson's arrival, the program had only hit that mark once from 2004-15. 

Starting with advancing to a regional final in just his second season on the Plains in 2017, there has been no shortage of memorable moments in Thompson's tenure. In year three, the Tigers took defending national champion and No. 1 Florida to a winner-take-all game three in the Gainesville Super Regional before busting the door down and advancing to Omaha for the first time since 1997 the following year. On the Road to Omaha, Steven Williams hit a walk-off, three-run home run to help Auburn eventually win the Atlanta Regional before the Tigers scored 13 runs in the first inning of the decisive game of the Chapel Hill Super Regional, ultimately becoming the first team to defeat North Carolina in a home super regional.

Three years later in 2022, Auburn hosted a regional for the first time since 2010 and outscored the likes of Florida State, UCLA and Southeastern Louisiana 51-18 before also becoming the first team to defeat Oregon State in a home super regional. With a one-run lead in the decisive game, All-American reliever Blake Burkhalter retired eight straight Oregon State hitters to send Auburn to Omaha for the second time in three postseasons. The Tigers became the only team in the country to win two road super regionals during the span. 

Along with all of the on-field success, Thompson also played a pivotal role in the planning, approval and completion of the newly-renovated Plainsman Park, a $30 million project that was completed prior to the 2025 season. In its first season in the renovated and expanded ballpark that now features three premium club options and a standing room area on top of the War Eagle Wall in left field, Auburn welcomed more than 200,000 fans through the gates, ranking top 10 in the country both total attendance (201,703) and average attendance (5,603).  

Thompson, who spent three seasons as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Auburn from 2006-08, returned to the Plains after seven seasons at Mississippi State as both associate head coach and pitching coach. In seven seasons at MSU, Thompson made four regionals, two super regionals, won the SEC Tournament and advanced to the College World Series, finishing as NCAA runner-up in 2013. In addition to his experience at Auburn and Mississippi State, Thompson also spent five seasons at Georgia from 2002-05, including a trip to the College World Series in 2004. 

Thompson launched his coaching career as pitching coach and top assistant at Huntingdon College (Ala.) in 1993, before returning to his alma mater in Birmingham, where he helped lead the Panthers to back-to-back Southern States Conference championships and in 1995 coached BSC to its first NAIA World Series berth.

Thompson left BSC briefly to serve as head coach at Jefferson State Community College in Birmingham in 1997, where he was honored as the Regional Tournament Coach of the Year, the ABCA Alabama Junior College Coach of the Year and the Southeast Region Coach of the Year after guiding JSCC to a 39-21 mark, the AJCAA Region 22 State Championship and a third-place finish in the NJCAA Division II World Series.

He returned to Birmingham-Southern as top assistant the following season, beginning a four-year run during the most successful span in BSC baseball history, making three straight appearances in the NAIA World Series while winning the NAIA National Championship in 2001.

Thompson currently serves as the large-school representative for the Alabama Baseball Coaches Association and is an All-American committee member representing the Southeast Region for the ABCA. Thompson also spent the 2023-24 seasons as a member of the NCAA Division I Baseball Regional Advisory Committee. 

Thompson prepped at Amory (Miss.) High School and later starred as a pitcher at Itawamba (Miss.) Community College from 1989-90. On Oct. 25, 2014, Thompson was inducted into the ICC Athletic Hall of Fame.

He earned a bachelor's degree in history at BSC in 1992 and completed a master's degree in sports administration at UAB in 1996. He is married to the former Robin Ashe of Birmingham, Ala., and they are the parents of three daughters - Anna, Olivia and Madelyn Gail - and grandparents of Mary Gail and Hayes Grady Moreman.