Woj Out: Adrian Wojnarowski Leaves ESPN To Be College GM
Written by djfrosty on September 20, 2024
Source: Allen Berezovsky / Getty
NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski announced that he is leaving ESPN and taking a newly created role at his alma mater.
The sports world was shocked on Wednesday (Sept. 18) when ESPN NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski announced that he was retiring from his reporting career. “The craft transformed my life, but I’ve decided to retire from ESPN and the news industry. I understand the commitment required in my role and it’s an investment that I’m no longer driven to make. Time isn’t in endless supply and I want to spend mine in ways that are more personally meaningful,” he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, ending with: “After all these years reporting on everyone’s teams, I’m headed back to my own.”
The 55-year-old reporter began his career at the Hartford Courant, rising to become a national NBA correspondent with Yahoo Sports. It was there where he delivered some of the more impactful news in basketball, from his coverage of LeBron James and “The Decision” in 2010 and his coverage of the NBA Draft to scooping the league on draft nights, which would be issued in posts to X and come to be known as “Woj Bombs” by writers and the public alike. “What he did so effectively was take a lot of that traditional journalistic insider work and transition and use Twitter,” said Hofstra University assistant professor of radio, TV, and film Laith Zuraikat. “I’m sure others thought of it, but nobody did it as well as he did. He was the guy.”
Wojnarowski is leaving the network that he’s been a part of since 2017 to take a newly created position of general manager at St. Bonaventure University. The reporter is a 1991 graduate of the institution’s Jandoli School of Communication in western New York. “It is a thrill of a lifetime to be able to return to a university and community that I love in a role of service to our student-athletes, coaches and institution,” Wojnarowski said in an ESPN interview on his departure. “I am hopeful that I can bring value in a lot of areas to our basketball program and open doors for our young men’s futures in ways both professionally and personally.” The GM role is a fairly recent position with college basketball, thanks to the creation of the transfer portal and name, image, and likeness deals for student-athletes.