Adrian Wojnarowski Leaves ESPN: The Rise of General Managers in College Sports
NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski retires from ESPN to become a General Manager at St. Bonaventure. Explore how the rise of NIL has transformed college sports, making the GM role essential.
This past week, legendary NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski announced his retirement from ESPN as he reached terms to become a General Manager of his alma mater St. Bonaventure’s men’s basketball team. As the famous “Woj Bombs” will come to an end, it sparks the question, what is a General Manager in college sports?
The job has become more popular as the rise of NIL has skyrocketed over the last few years. The field of college sports are becoming more and more like a professional league. One could even argue that it has already reach the point that it’s a professional league.
Many basketball coaches have discussed the impact that NIL has had on the recruiting front. They are having to coach the team, handle practice, work with their staff to develop and train players, work with alumni and other donors to raise funds, recruit not only new players, but their own, and more. That’s far too many responsibilities to handle for one singular individual. Enter the General Manager.
Woj will focus on managing NIL opportunities, transfer portal management, recruiting, maintaining and developing relationships with alumni, general fundraising, and professional player programs. From this description, you can see how in a sense, the role is similar to that of the professional leagues. Focusing on development, fundraising, recruiting, and portal are all similar responsibilities that professional level General Managers have (recruiting being signing players and fundraising being working with the owners for budgets).
Just a couple of months ago, Syracuse announced they’d be hiring Alex Kline as the men’s basketball team’s General Manager. Kline had spent four years as a scout for the New York Knicks, but as an alumni, was eventually brought back home. His responsibilities include, scouting, recruiting, former student-athlete engagement, NIL opportunities, transfer portal management, and fundraising.
While doing some research, I found a job opening for a general manager position at UConn. You can read the full job description here, but it is quite different than the previous two positions I’ve mentioned thus far. This position highlights helping with practice, data collection, coordinating recruiting events, monitoring the budget, etc. UConn’s job opening seems to be less “Professional General Manager” and more of a position fit for early career candidates.
On the year, Duke, BYU, Wyoming, Syracuse, Villanova, College of Charleston, DePaul, Michigan, Arkansas, Texas Tech, Baylor, and Butler have all added a General Manager to their staffs. In some cases, these individuals are operating in a double role of Assistant Coach and General Manager, however, others are operating solely as a General Manager.
As the collegiate field shifts more and more towards that of a professional league, you’ll continue to see this position appear. In many cases, those serving double-roles will most likely become more rare as the responsibilities of a GM will require a full focus in order to grow the program. Woj is a great example, while others don’t quite have the platform that he does, but the position could require one individual full time rather than someone juggling both assistant coach and GM responsibilities.
If you think about it, teams are virtually having to recruiting their own team, while worrying about having to raise enough NIL funds, while also navigating the transfer portal. The rise of contracts is on the horizon. As schools are attempting to understand and navigate the new world of NIL, this position will only continue to grow. You could even envision a scouting department and analytics department spinning off as some of the larger schools have the budget for it. This would allow assistant coaches to really focus on the development of their players.
What do you think about the rise of the General Manager position? What is your opinion of the ever-changing landscape of college basketball?
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