In a shock, ESPN analyst Woj, aka Adrian Wojnarowski, announced his retirement from the network, walking away from a whopping $35 million contract. The popular 55-year-old insider is known for dropping so-called “Woj bombs” on social media during NBA drafts with insider information on upcoming trades. However, Woj revealed in a September 18 post on X, formerly Twitter, that he would be leaving his lucrative salary at ESPN for a different role at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure University. Here’s why he’s leaving the network and the news industry behind.
Adrian Wojnarowski’s retirement from ESPN explained
Woj has decided to retire from ESPN to spend his time “in ways that are more personally meaningful.”
This is according to a statement he wrote on X, where he admits that he’s “no longer driven” to continue being an ESPN analyst. He writes that “time isn’t in endless supply,” and while he is grateful for the network for giving him a dream job for seven years, he wanted to make a substantial “life change.”
Woj has accepted the position of GM or general manager, per ESPN, at St. Bonaventure, from which he graduated in 1991. His new role involves name, image, and likeness allocation and assisting Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt with recruitment.
His connection to the university has been quite public, having not only pledged $50,000 in 2024 to the school’s NIL collective, Team Unfurl, but also matching donations for any sponsorships secured by the collective by the end of the season.
As pointed out by Andrew Marchand from the New York Post on X, Woj is walking away from $20 million that was left on his $35 million ESPN contract signed in 2022. The deal had him earn an annual salary of $7 million, and he had three years left on the contract.
Marchand also notes that his bosses, Jimmy Pitaro and Burke Magnus, were “surprised” by his sudden retirement. Well, if anyone should make a grand exit with a “Woj bomb,” it would be the man himself.
Despite rumors, Shannon Sharpe has not been fired by ESPN after what happened on his Instagram Live. The network did fire Samantha Ponder earlier this September and Robert Griffin III this August.
