If you only know Adrian Wojnarowski as an NBA insider, Twitter newsbreaker, draft pick revealer and ESPN personality, then his final Woj Bomb — as his true but out-of-nowhere reports became famously known — may not make any sense.
Wednesday morning, Wojnarowski, 55, tweeted out that he was retiring from sports journalism, walking away from a lucrative and powerful spot at ESPN as the most powerful and famous reporter in the NBA.
The chaser: he is leaving to become the general manager of his beloved alma mater, St. Bonaventure University. There he will lead the recruiting and NIL efforts to help his good friend coach Mark Schmidt keep the proud Bonnie program relevant and eventually return to the NCAA Tournament.
“I’m thrilled and humbled to return to St. Bonaventure with an opportunity to serve the university,” Wojnarowski said in a statement.
Again, a guy at the peak of his reporting and news breaking powers, with the dream job and salary of any sports journalist in the country, is stepping down voluntarily, with three more years on his deal, and choosing to run a mid-major college hoops program in a small town in the snow belt of Western New York.
With his contacts and experience, if Wojnarowski wanted to leave journalism for the competitive side of the business, he could have easily joined a sports agency or a NBA front office. At least one other major college program, upon hearing rumors of Woj’s move, offered him a similar spot with them and the lure of trying to win a national title.
He said no.
Instead he took the freedom provided from making enough money that he didn’t need anymore money to go create his dream job. It doesn’t get much better than that.
“I’m really excited,” he said.
All of this speaks to two characteristics that I have known about Wojnarowski across three decades of friendship and both working against and with each other — he spent more than a decade here at Yahoo Sports.
One, Woj is as gifted of a writer and reporter as sports journalism has, but the secret to his success was a competitive bent that could cross over into maniacal.
Two, there is nothing outside of his family he loves more than St. Bonaventure, the school where a kid from Bristol, Connecticut, found his footing, his confidence and his wife, Amy.
To the sports journalism part, Woj’s drive came not from the thrill of breaking a story or writing a great column, it was in beating the other guy. Starting as an intern at the Hartford Courant, through stints as a college beat reporter in Waterbury, Connecticut, and a columnist in Fresno, California, and North Jersey, he was driven to get higher and higher in the industry.
Eventually at Yahoo he became a hard-hitting NBA columnist and then newsbreaker without peer. At ESPN, he found fame and fortune doing the job.
But the money and the attention were never it. He and his family still live in the same home they did when he was a suburban newspaper columnist. Simple meals were always preferred. He never changed under those bright television lights because they were simply a means to the end (more broken stories) than the destination.
Winning was what always mattered the most. It was always a zero-sum game for him. Each night was about knowing whatever competition was in front of him; he beat it in every way possible.
So while he will stop chasing down rumors and news tips, he will now focus on getting better players and eventually victories for the Bonnies. He will use his relationships and talents to try to get championships for the team he likes the most.
This wasn’t about finding some high-profile NBA job, just as being a reporter was never about going to ESPN (he turned them down repeatedly through the years before finally accepting).
This is about competition.
A better recruit, not a Woj Bomb.
It makes perfect sense. Good luck to the rest of the Atlantic 10, because while the Bonnies may never get good enough to win an actual Final Four, this guy doesn’t lose when he sets his mind to something.
