“People think of general managers in the pros,” Sullivan said Monday during Atlantic 10 Conference Media Day, “and those are people that are making personnel decisions. I think we’ve done that for a long time between myself and our administration.”
The idea of using a general manager arose during the name, image and likeness and transfer portal era. it’s become a more complicated game, and college sports will change even more next year when schools likely will be paying athletes directly.
A U.S. District Court judge in California, Claudia Wilken, granted preliminary approval to a settlement in an antitrust case. It’s the latest hurdle cleared in the march toward revenue sharing between schools and athletes.
Butler, Syracuse, Charleston, Iowa and Butler are among the other schools that have hired general managers. St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt talked Monday about the decision to hire Wojnarowski.
“We’re really lucky,” Schmidt said. “Woj transformed sports journalism, and he loves St. Bonaventure. We’ve worked together for four years. Behind the scenes, Woj has so many relationships that we couldn’t build as a staff in the next 30 years. Now he’s the general manager. It’s what a lot of schools, especially high major schools, have. His job is to raise money for our collective. St. Bonaventure is a small school. There’s donor fatigue. We can’t go after the same people over and over again. We got to be creative and find new streams of revenue. That’s one of the challenges that Woj has. The relationships that he has, not just nationally with agents and general managers and player personnel directors, but internationally, everybody knows him. It’s a home run for Bonaventure.”
According to a St. Bonaventure press release on the hiring, Wojnarowski “will serve the coaching staff in managing a wide range of responsibilities including name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities and as a liaison with collectives; transfer portal management; recruit, family and alumni player relationships; professional player programs; and program fundraising.”
Sullivan said he and others on the coaching staff and in the athletic office do the things a general manager would do “all day, every day” and he knows they’ll continue to adjust to the coming changes.
“This is not for the faint of heart,” Sullivan said. “There’s more to come. ... In this environment, you’ve never arrived, but I’m really confident in how we’ve been able to do it and the skill sets that we have between our basketball staff and my office.”
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