“He didn’t want to…take a shower with your phone up against the shower door so you can see a text that’s coming in,” explained ESPN’s NFL-newsbreaker Adam Schefter, talking about Adrian Wojnarowski’s possible burnout leading to his sudden retirement. The NBA veteran, who started his remarkable “breaking news” journey in 2007 with Yahoo! Sports and moved to ESPN in 2017, left his playfield of seven years revealing he wanted to spend his time “in ways that are more personally meaningful”. 

However, as some ex-associates of Wojnarowski and ESPN have now revealed, there might be far more water under the bridge (read: the “Woj Bomb” architect’s ESPN colleague, Pat McAfee), leading to a power struggle inside the ESPN office. Truth be told, this isn’t even the first time we’re hearing about McAfee’s blatant dislike of Wojnaroswki. But before we get to that…

Ex-ESPN employee explains the circus and fear of “falling on the wrong side”

Former ESPN employees, Amin Elhassan and Dan Le Batard claimed on the LeBatard Show, that Pat McAfee, thanks to his close relationship with Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, was the reason for the sudden/shocking development. “He (Pat McAfee) knocked out Woj while using Shams, which was interesting, (because) Woj has [Jimmy] Pitaro as a giant ally… But McAfee’s got the relationship with Iger, that’s the head of the Disney,” Batard said.

For the unversed, Jimmy Pitaro is ESPN’s chairman and Bob Iger is the head honcho of the Walt Disney Company, which owns the majority (80%) of the programming network. Surprisingly (or even unsurprisingly to some) Iger is yet to react on the void left behind by Woj, who’ll now be taking up a general manager role for his alma mater, St. Bonaventure’s men’s basketball program. Pitaro, on the other hand, took to X to mention how his now ex-employee’s “work ethic is second to none”, in a well-deserved tribute.

Having said that, Dan also revealed how Adrian Wojnaroskwi was the one controlling everything within ESPN. Referring to McAfee, Iger and Pitaro as “power brokers” and Woj as the “biggest of the power brokers”, the former ESPN employee revealed that the latter had a hand in everything, including who was appearing where within the network. Le Batard went on to say the opposite was also happening when “people weren’t appearing on the network”—something his co-hosts even dubbed as “damning”, due to the reported removal of opportunities at the hands of NBA’s news-breaker veteran.

“Woj was really vindictive about how he carved out the space on ESPN for where it is that people would and could be used around basketball and he consolidated all of the power. I know that because I’ve talked to too many people at ESPN who were afraid of falling on the wrong side of Woj,” the 55-year-old analyst mentioned on his show.

So what did McAfee do to tip the scale? He reportedly had The Athletic’s Shams Charania, aka Woj’s former protégé and current rival, on the show frequently and even took some digs at his co-worker from time to time. Case in point: In June this year, McAfee had invited Charania on his show to talk about JJ Reddick’s possible move to the Los Angeles Lakers. After Charania dropped off the call, McAfee had blatantly stated, “Shams is our NBA guy. Completely OK with other NBA guys being our guy, but Shams has been our guy for literally half a decade.” Keep in mind, McAfee and Woj have been at ESPN together since 2019. So to be referred to as the “other NBA guy” certainly points toward some behind-the-scenes animosity.

Quite the reveal, wouldn’t you say? But Pat McAfee was not done. In fact, this just seems like the beginning…

Former Colts star pushes for ESPN to hire Wojnarowski replacement

“The universe just pieced this thing together seemingly: Shams Charania,” Pat stated with all the grace of an author sitting down for his/her first book reading. But he wasn’t in the dark about the conversations going around. “People are going to say that this is obviously who we are going to say. But if you take our bias out of this conversation, there’s only one answer- It’s Shams Charania.”

Clearly, the 30-year-old has garnered the respect of McAfee! But all things aside – the rivalry, the bias, etc., Charania is certainly an ideal candidate. The Loyola University alum has proved his mettle in the sports media world, regularly delivering timely updates to hungry fans, sometimes even before veteran NBA insiders. In case you didn’t know, Shams Charania was mentored by Woj back at Yahoo! Sports before the two went their separate ways.

Although he isn’t the only candidate, the kind of benchmark Adrian Wojnarowski has set when it comes to ESPN’s breaking news coverage, Shams Charania seems to be the only one who can replicate similar output to the hoops community. Notably, as the Los Angeles Lakers were working to secure for the team, both Woj and Charania were keenly following the development, However, Shams emerged victorious on that occasion by first revealing JJ Reddick would be the probably choice, as opposed to Woj, whose reporting said Dan Hurley “was not the No. 1 candidate”. Although, Hurley was considered for the role, he turned down the six-year, $70 million role to stay at UConn, chasing a third NCAA title.

Either way, this is a decision that will certainly have a lot of eyes on it. As such, stay tuned to this space for updates as they come.