When Adrian Wojnarowski announced his sudden retirement from ESPN and the NBA insider game, it sent shockwaves throughout all of sports media. One of the aftershocks that came in the wake of his announcement was that Adam Schefter was considered as a possibility to pull double duty and step into his shoes at ESPN.
The thought of one person being the pre-eminent NFL AND NBA insider at ESPN seemed unthinkable given the hours that insiders have to put in and the burnout that led Woj to walk away in the first place.
But according to Adam Schefter himself, he believes it would have been “very doable.”
In an interview with CNBC’s Alex Sherman, Schefter addressed the reporting around him potentially taking Woj’s job in addition to his NFL reporting duties, a role that was eventually filled with ESPN’s hiring of the top NBA insider on the market in Shams Charania. In fact, he could see a possibility where he could serve as an insider for all sports.
Oh, I actually think it’s very doable, very doable. I think that Woj’s skill – as a newsman, as an insider, you understand how the business works, and you understand the relationships that make it all possible. And big stories are big stories, whether they’re in football, basketball, baseball, hockey, golf, whatever it may be. And so, I believe that if I wanted, I could go try to replace – I would never be Woj, but I would do it the way that I would. Woj is a legend. And I think that I definitely could do that job. And I think I could do that job in a more than competent way. Now, I actually thought – like it never came up with ESPN beyond a peripheral conversation or two, so it never really gained any traction there. But I think it would have been really cool to just be an insider for all sports. And hear me out there. So, now maybe you’re just doing NBA free agency and NFL free agency and the NFL draft and the NBA draft, and you’re not doing some of the other stuff, the mundane stuff that comes along with it the rest of the year. So you’re focusing on the big, important news cycles with each – I thought about this.
When Woj retired, Schefter celebrated his colleague on ESPN airwaves by saying, “he wanted his life back.” Clearly the NFL insider doesn’t share those same concerns… especially since he once openly bragged about breaking news while making love. To each their own.
But as far as the actual reality of Adam Schefter replacing Adrian Wojnarowski, it apparently wasn’t practical because of the contract situation at ESPN. In fact, Schefter talked about having “golden handcuffs on the football beat” which would seem to preclude him from taking on another full-time role at the network.
So I mean, again, those types of discussions did not come up. So it’s a moot point, but I thought about it, and I definitely think Woj – you know, Woj and I talked, and if Woj had waited until our contracts were up together, which we did our deals together, I would have been interested in that. But he went early. So it’s not feasible when, to your point, I’ve got the golden handcuffs on the football beat, and that’s what I was doing, if that makes sense.
Alas, Adam Schefter NBA/NFL insider may have to remain only a hypothetical. But Schefter also told Sherman that one area he thought was under-covered from a breaking news standpoint was golf. And with ESPN having a broadcast role at The Masters and other majors, perhaps that’s a place where we may see him moonlight in the future so he can scratch the itch of expanding his work beyond covering the NFL.
