No one can question Adrian Wojnarowski’s commitment to his alma mater. In 2024, he left ESPN to become the general manager of the St. Bonaventure basketball program. He left a salary of $7 million a year for one just around $70,000. Yes, you read that correctly.
But a new report from The Athletic suggests that, as dedicated as Wojnarowski is to the job, his hyper-partisan political views may be complicating the program’s growth.
That’s the read from local power brokers at The Bartlett Country Club, just outside Olean, about three miles from campus.
“All the locals get the sense that he doesn’t want to be associated with them if he doesn’t have the same political bent as them,” said Eric Firkel, one of the Bartlett regulars.
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“Fair or not, that is a general feeling through the community, that maybe you look down on people for being a bunch of MAGA Republicans.”
We’d lean toward fair.
Wojnarowski has been quite open about his disdain for President Trump and the Republican Party. Most notably, ESPN suspended him for two weeks in 2020 after he sent Republican Sen. Josh Hawley a two-word email, “F— you,” in response to questions about the NBA’s business ties with China.
More recently, he’s been sharing anti-Trump columns from The New York Times on Threads, sometimes adding captions like “Stand up to fascism.”
He was also a vocal supporter of BLM on social media during his ESPN tenure.
The Athletic pressed Wojnarowski on the political friction with the community, and he didn’t exactly push back.
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“Wojnarowski didn’t answer directly when asked about the political tensions, but he said he believes a successful basketball team will unite the community,” the outlet reported.
The county where the Bartlett sits went for Trump over Kamala Harris by a two-to-one margin in 2024.
Speaking of Harris, her campaign reached out to Wojnarowski to break the news that she had picked Tim Walz as her running mate. According to Sports Illustrated, another outlet beat him to it.
Look, it’s one thing to be a White Dude for Kamala at ESPN while covering the NBA. It may have even helped Wojnarowski connect with NBA sources. However, suffering from Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) isn’t an ideal condition as a general manager who’s required to connect with donors outside rural Olean, New York.
