Adrian Wojnarowski knows that if St. Bonaventure is going to make a run in the NCAA Tournament, it will likely require some magic.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fair to wonder, however, whether such magic still even exists in the current climate of college athletics.<\/p>\n
In an interview released on Thursday, Wojnarowski joined CNBC\u2019s Alex Sherman<\/a> for a wide-ranging conversation regarding his past life as an NBA insider and his new life as the Bonnies\u2019 general manager. And when it comes to the state of the sport he\u2019s now immersed in, the 56-year-old agreed that it\u2019s in danger of losing some of what has made it so special come March.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does take away the magic,\u201d Wojnarowski told Sherman of challenges that mid-major programs like his own currently face. \u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing right now is the Power Four conferences are really dictating the rules, the landscape. You\u2019re seeing with this House settlement, it\u2019s the Power Four leagues deciding the rules and how this is going to go. And all of that \u2014 literally \u2014 all of it is to benefit them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The idea of March Madness losing some of its luster was an especially common thought<\/a> during this past season\u2019s NCAA Tournament, which was largely chalk and ultimately resulted in just the second-ever Final Four only comprised of No. 1 seeds (the tournament\u2019s ratings, however, did just fine<\/a>). With factors like NIL and the transfer portal allowing the Power Four conferences to pluck the best players from mid-major programs, potential Cinderellas such as St. Bonaventure face an even steeper uphill climb than they already did.<\/p>\n Just eight months into the job, Wojnarowski has already seen it firsthand, with the Bonnies\u2019 leading scorer from last season, combo guard Melvin Council Jr., subsequently transferring to Kansas for his senior campaign. Adrian Wojnarowski isn\u2019t bitter; it\u2019s just a reality of college athletics\u2019 current climate. But it has helped inform his approach as his alma mater\u2019s GM<\/p>\n \u201cI tell our folks all the time, don\u2019t wait around for legislation that\u2019s going to come out to make it easier for us at St Bonaventure or St Joe\u2019s in Philly in our league, or other comparable schools to ours,\u201d Wojnarowski said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to understand who we are, what our pathway is to building teams. Because no one\u2019s coming to rescue us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a challenge,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut at the same time, I\u2019m at St. Bonaventure because I believe we can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adrian Wojnarowski knows that if St. Bonaventure is going to make a run in the NCAA Tournament, it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[13396,7,217,231,772,1544],"class_list":{"0":"post-50322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-adrian-wojnarowski","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaab"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114553042089039503","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}