Adam Schefter has made a career out of being the most influential and most followed NFL insider of all time. But he wants to be more.
While Schefter is best known for his work covering the NFL, he has moonlighted in other sports on a few occasions. Most notably, ESPN employed him as a sideline reporter for NBA broadcasts. In fact, it was part of his contract that he signed with the worldwide leader all the way back in 2016. However, the times that Schefter did work NBA games were relatively few and far between.
But he very clearly wants to do more.
In an appearance with Andrew Marchand on The Athletic scribe’s Main Event podcast, Adam Schefter said that he wants ESPN to let him out of his cage more often so he can have the thrill of experiencing covering sports other than the NFL, where his reporting can often times be very transactionally based.
Adam Schefter loves what he does, but sometimes he would like to be let out of his ESPN “cage.”
Full pod is up pic.twitter.com/Y5eB5LT0Tu
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) January 30, 2025
“The few times that ESPN sent me out to cover an NBA game and do a sideline reporting gig, I loved that because you walk in, like I remember the night that my son got into Michigan I was doing a Cleveland Cavaliers game on a Friday night in late March. I’m in the hall and LeBron walks past and he goes, ‘What are you doing here did you get lost?'” Schefter recounted.
“I like being let out of the cage, and ESPN doesn’t let me out of the cage very often,” he continued. “I would love to do sidelines for golf. They haven’t asked me. Things like that that get your juices going a little bit. I love what I do and I’ll do it for a long time, but I love to feel the energy of something that is not familiar to you, that you haven’t done for 35 years, where it’s new faces in a new place and that to me is a little bit stimulating.
So there you have it. While it doesn’t look like Adam Schefter is going to follow his former colleague Adrian Wojnarowski into retirement any time soon, he would appreciate some more diverse opportunities from ESPN moving forward. He was even mentioned as possibly replacing Woj and pulling double duty covering the NBA and NFL. Alas, that did not come to pass as ESPN ultimately hired Shams Charania.
But if you suddenly see Adam Schefter reporting live from The Masters this April before the NFL Draft, you’ll know why.
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