Kevin Negandhi and Adrian Wojnarowski discuss challenges of NIL at Temple event

Athletic programs in the NCAA continue to try to navigate through the ever-evolving world of name, image, and likeness. Temple is no different, and took a step it hopes will help in the process on Tuesday.

Kevin Negandhi, an ESPN anchor and a Temple alumnus, and Adrian Wojnarowski, a former ESPN NBA reporter and current general manager of St. Bonaventure’s men’s basketball team, hosted an NIL event in Mitten Hall on Temple’s campus.

The focus was to educate alumni and those in attendance on the evolving state of NIL in college athletics, as well as the struggles that schools like St. Bonaventure and Temple face.

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“We just thought it’d be fun,” Wojnarowski said. “We’ll try to raise some money tonight. But just as importantly, educate people, entertain people with some memories.”

Temple and St. Bonaventure had a strong rivalry back when Temple was in the Atlantic 10 from 1982-2013. This is what created a bond between Negandhi and Wojnarowski.

They had cubicles next to each other at ESPN and often shared memories from when their alma maters played against each other.

“We talked about our passion and love for our alma maters,” Negandhi said. “This is how we bonded, this is how we are here today. We were talking about games we witnessed. That’s what we were talking about, our loves.”

Wojnarowski spent 10 years at Yahoo! Sports and seven years at ESPN as one of the most well known NBA reporters in the business. He announced in September that he would be leaving ESPN to be the first general manager at St. Bonaventure.

It’s a decision that he does not regret.

“I just knew that it was over,” Wojnarowski said. “I felt really pulled toward this. I felt pulled toward St. Bonaventure. I wanted to do something different. Now I can turn [my phone] off and not worry about what lights up when I turn it back on. My world doesn’t change in 30 seconds anymore.”

Wojnarowski talked about some of the early challenges he has faced in his new role, like the competitive nature of recruiting in this new college landscape. Negandhi emphasized the importance of building a family-like atmosphere to set the students up for success.

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“That’s what we’re talking about,” Negandhi said. “Giving student-athletes the ability to kind of come back and have this as a resource at Temple University, inside St. Bonaventure, you identify. We came back because we’re connected to our alma maters and we want to make sure that student-athletes feel that way, that this is not just a transaction, that there’s a family here.”

While NIL continues to develop, and with additions like revenue sharing on the horizon, Wojnarowski and Negandhi thought it was important to have an event like this so alumni can understand the uncertainties that surround it.

Revenue sharing “will help our NIL or our player salary number go up from what it was last year,” Wojnarowski said. “But that number is also going to exponentially go up with our competitors, who are bigger, who have bigger endowments, who have different and more significant [ways] to create revenue.”