If anyone can understand why Adrian Wojnarowski was ready to leave ESPN, it’s Adam Schefter, Jeff Passan, and Pete Thamel.
ESPN’s insiders assembled on NBA Today to discuss Wojnarowski’s decision to leave his post in the group.
Wojnarowski dropped his biggest, and maybe final, Woj Bomb on Wednesday morning when he shocked the sports world with his decision to retire from ESPN and the news industry. While NBA fans might be surprised by Wojnarowski’s willingness to walk away from nearly $20 million owed to him by ESPN, his insider colleagues seemed almost envious of his newfound freedom from the job.
“He wanted his life back. He didn’t want to have to work on holidays. He didn’t want to be away from more family gatherings. He didn’t want to have to…take a shower with your phone up against the shower door so you can see a text that’s coming in, or take your phone with you to… pic.twitter.com/mfSavmOKTi
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 18, 2024
“He wanted his life back,” Schefter told NBA Today host Malika Andrews. “He didn’t want to have to work on holidays. He didn’t want to be away from more family gatherings. He didn’t want to have to…take a shower with your phone up against the shower door so you can see a text that’s coming in or take your phone with you to the urinal and hold it in one hand while you take care of your business in the other. That’s the life that we live. And that was the life that we chose not to do any longer because it takes over your life.”
Wojnarowski will now live his professional life by accepting a role as the general manager of the men’s basketball program at St. Bonaventure, where he will help with recruiting and NIL opportunities, as well as support head coach Mark Schmidt. St. Bonaventure University, by the way, is located in New York about six hours northwest of Manhattan. Handling NIL responsibilities in upstate New York isn’t exactly like going to live on a beach someplace warm.
While Wojnarowski’s role with St. Bonaventure will undoubtedly still be demanding, it likely pales in comparison to the demand of being a sports insider, which should offer a little insight into how grueling the job is. Wojnarowski still has the connections to break news, but it sounds like he doesn’t have the desire.
No one expects fans to feel bad for someone like Schefter, who is in the middle of a $45 million contract with ESPN, or Wojnarowski, who was reportedly making more than $7 million annually. But being an insider isn’t for everyone. Wojnarowski changed the sports media industry by setting the standard for insiders. A standard that requires insiders to have an obsession with breaking news. A standard that requires them to be all in all the time.
“Adrian Wojnarowski changed this business,” Passan said. “When he came to Yahoo back in 2007 and he was covering the NBA after being a general columnist at the Bergen Record and covering baseball and football and basketball and college sports and doing it all incredibly well, I was like, ‘Why is Woj gonna cover just one sport?’ And the answer is because he saw where this industry was going. He understood the profound effect that the internet had and how specialization was going to be the most important thing and nobody was as specialized and nobody was quite the specialist that Adrian was on his sport.”
Two years ago, Passan spoke about being a “slave” to his phone. “Woj has this fantasy where one day — I don’t know when it’s going to be — but when he’s done, he’s going to take his phone and throw it in the ocean,” Passan told Andrew Marchand and John Ourand in 2022. “And, you know what? The ocean throw of the phone is a dream that I have adopted and will steal at some point.”
Wojnarowski might not be done working, but he can now throw his phone in the ocean and not have to worry about breaking another NBA story for ESPN. And that’s a career apex every insider seemingly looks forward to reaching.