Adrian Wojnarowski (center) is flanked by Head Men’s Basketball Coach Mark Schmidt (left) and Vice President and Director of Athletics Bob Beretta, ’87.
BY TOM MISSEL | Chief Communications Officer
Sports Illustrated called it the biggest media story of 2024. On Sept. 18, Adrian Wojnarowski, ’91, dropped the biggest bomb of his acclaimed journalism career.
He tweeted to his 6.4 million followers that he was leaving his lucrative job as ESPN’s Senior NBA Insider to become the general manager of men’s basketball at St. Bonaventure to help the program navigate what he calls the “tsunami” inundating NCAA Division I athletics.
How big?
CNN, Fox News and CNBC covered the news. Four weeks after Chris Mannix’s 3,200-word story in SI on Wojnarowski’s decision, a New York Times photographer tracked Woj’s every move in Reilly Center on New Year’s Eve during the Bonnies’ thrilling last-second win over VCU.
Three hours before that game tipped off, Woj sat down in the RC reds to talk about the transition and the challenges that lie ahead.
Q: It’s been about four months since you stepped away from ESPN. Do you miss it?
Adrian Wojnarowski, ’91, speaks at the Sept. 25, 2024, press conference formally introducing him as the first-ever men’s basketball general manager at St. Bonaventure.
WOJ: No. I’m fully invested here. It’s been great so far and I’m really enjoying throwing myself into it and trying to be creative in the approach.
I just haven’t had time to think about anything but what’s in front of us here. We have a tremendous number of challenges but we also have a number of opportunities, too. I’m just taking my strengths and applying them to our program, to help our players and our program and our school.
I do miss a lot of the people and I still keep up a lot of those relationships. They’re important to me personally, and many of them can be important to our players moving ahead. But I was ready to move on.
Q: This new GM role has many responsibilities: recruiting, transfer portal, Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), working with the Team Unfurl collective. How do you prioritize those?
WOJ: I think they all go hand in hand. Right now, retention is most important for us, keeping this very talented group together. In this day and age, it can be perpetual free agency. But from day one, this group has bought into Coach Mark Schmidt and the program, and also to the university and being a part of this community. You want to give them every opportunity to thrive here and stay here, to let them see the opportunities that come from being at Bonaventure, on campus but also outside of it, opportunities we can bring them in the off-season, and experiences and relationships that we can help them develop.
I’m enthusiastic about how our players feel about their experience here with Coach, but also about potential players and their families, coaches at different levels, agents. They’re excited about what we have to offer and seeing that we’re doing some unique things at our level that they’re going to have access to: NBA opportunities, professional opportunities, meeting people who can help them, not just while at Bonaventure, but well beyond their time here.
A big part of it is taking my global network, in basketball and beyond, and making it our players’ and our program’s network. Coach has 30-odd players playing professionally all over the world. There are a lot of places to make a great living (playing basketball) beyond this country. We want to educate them on how you get there, how you stay there, and knowing that when you play here, you’re going to get developed and you’re going to grow as a player.
Now, it may not be over four years anymore; maybe over two years, right? But the growth is still there and that hasn’t changed. That’s what people want and we have a head coach and a coaching staff that have an incredible track record in that regard.
It might look different now with the portal, but I think the values of the program and the things about Bonaventure that appeal to players and their families haven’t changed.
Q: If we can’t always offer players the same financially as some schools, maybe even some schools in our own league, what’s the value added that you tell recruits about this place?
WOJ: Bonaventure was transformational in my life, and the lives of many others.
People may suggest that in coming back here that I gave up some things, but I only really look at what I’ve gained by being back. I do hope that decision lends some credibility with our young people about the decision I made. I hope it shows how strongly I believe in this university and program. But it’s not just me. We have a whole network of alums and people who care deeply about this place and believe in it.
We want this to be a 40- or 50-year decision in choosing St. Bonaventure. When they see us bring back and honor the 2000 team and the 1968 team, we want our players to see how connected those men are after all these years. We hope that our players see that and look around their locker room and say, “Hey, we’d like to have that bond together some day.”
“Once a Bonnie, always a Bonnie” can’t just be a hashtag. We’ve got to live it here.
Q: As you leverage relationships in your global basketball network, what kind of desire have you seen from people to want to be involved with Bonaventure?
WOJ: There’s a lot of excitement around the program. Nick Khan, the president of WWE, used to be one of my agents at CAA (Creative Artists Agency), and so when I announced my decision to come here as GM, he immediately hit me up and said, “Hey, let’s see if there’s something we can do here.” They’ve been great.
Whether it’s the WWE belts or ISlides or quiiiz.com … these are global brands who want to be in business with Bonaventure, who see the benefits of our platform. There are others we’re working on that I think we’ll be able to announce during the season.
Q: How vital is NIL to the future of the program?
WOJ: Building out our NIL program for our players is more important than anything I’m going to work on here. Without it, we won’t exist. We couldn’t continue to compete in the Atlantic 10. We’ve always been at a disadvantage, but that’s about to grow exponentially.
Financially, we’re going to be limited compared to what other schools will be able to do, so we have to be really creative. We need our business partners to be creative with us, and for people who are invested in St. Bonaventure basketball to invest in the program. Without dramatic growth in those areas (NIL and Team Unfurl), the product on the court will look dramatically different.
We don’t have to have as much as VCU and Dayton and St. Louis dollar for dollar, but there’s a gulf that we will not be able to overcome if we aren’t aggressive and if everyone doesn’t take this very seriously. That’s the reality of where we are.
Men’s basketball co-captain Melvin Council Jr. earned Bona’s WWE player of the game belt with a thrilling game-winning bucket over VCU Dec. 31.
Q: What are you most proud of in your journalism career?
WOJ: When I was a student at Bonaventure, I just wanted to make a living at it. I wanted to be able to have a career. I never imagined what it would become.
I graduated and went back to Connecticut without a job. Just having a career where I stayed employed from start to finish was all I wanted and I did that. I was lucky that it ended at ESPN, but when I was a student, if you told me I could have covered the Bonnies at the Olean Times Herald or covered Little Three basketball for the Buffalo News, I would have signed right up.
Q: Most interesting person you’ve ever interviewed.
WOJ: Probably Kobe Bryant. Kobe was the smartest athlete, one of the smartest people, I ever spent time with. He just understood his craft, understood your craft, understood what you did. He had a great curiosity about other professions. Brilliant guy and extremely driven. I’ve never been around a more driven person.
Q: Favorite memory as a Bonaventure student.
WOJ: Pickup basketball in Butler.
Q: Favorite memory as a Bonnies fan, post-graduation.
WOJ: The Atlantic 10 Championship in 2012 in Atlantic City and the 2018 win over UCLA in Dayton. Having seen what our Atlantic 10 existence had looked like for a very long time, when we had years when we struggled to win just a couple games, winning the conference (in 2012) was pretty remarkable. And that night in Dayton was just awesome. I remember sitting with President DePerro and embracing him when we were pulling away. That was a great memory.
Q: With no obligation to do so, you revealed your cancer diagnosis to Sports Illustrated in December. How come and how are you feeling?
WOJ: I was fortunate to get my prostate cancer diagnosis discovered early, and I want others to be proactive in getting physicals and getting their PSA screenings. A lot of men my age (55) and younger, who should be getting regular physicals, sometimes aren’t as diligent as they should be. I hope it creates some awareness for others to go out and do that. Don’t put them off.
I feel good. I have regular evaluations so I’m staying on top of it. That’s the good thing about being able to get diagnosed early. If you can catch prostate cancer early, you can stay ahead of it.
Q: You often credit your wife, Amy (Carr) Wojnarowski, Class of 1992. How influential has she been?
WOJ: She’s meant everything to my career. I was able to be pretty selfish with my career because she was so selfless, whether it was her own career or with our kids. I missed a lot of stuff and she picked up the slack at every turn. She had her own legacy at St. Bonaventure that’s quite remarkable in its own right. She was an Ideal Bonaventure Senior and the Hellinger Award winner.
(To learn more about how you can help Team Unfurl and the NIL initiative, visit www.teamunfurl.com)
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