Sasha Stefanovic to Join BoilermakersCountry.com for Weekly 30-Minute Podcast
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Popular Purdue basketball player Sasha Stefanovic has signed a deal to join BoilermakersCountry.com, the Purdue team website on the Sports Illustrated FanNation platform, for a weekly 30-minute podcast that will run on this site throughout the 2021-22 college basketball season.
Stefanovic, a fifth-year senior from Crown Point, Ind., is taking advantage of new NCAA legislation that allows student-athletes the opportunity to profit off of their name, image and likeness now. The legislation went into effect on July 1.
His contract with Tom Brew, the publisher of the Sports Illustrated Purdue site, is the largest deal signed thus far.
"I'm thrilled to have Sasha join our team, and I think it's great that players are able to do these types of things now, and profit off of them,'' Brew said. "Sasha (Crown Point) and I (Schererville) are both Region guys from Northwest Indiana, and he's always been a terrific interview during his days at Purdue.
"I really looking forward to sitting down with him and talking basketball and other things for 30 minutes each week. Sasha is going to be very entertaining. I have no doubt about that, and we're really looking forward to sharing this fun new idea with the entire Boilermakers fan base.''
The plan is to do the show remotely from a location around Lafayette, so fans can come out and interact as well during a live broadcast with gift card giveaways and so much more.
Sponsorships, hosting and advertisers for the podcast are being considered now, and they will be announced in the near future. The podcast will start the first week in November, just prior to the Boilermakers opening the 2021-22 season, and it will run through the end of the NCAA Tournament.
Stefanovic is a 2017 graduate of Crown Point High School. He redshirted during his first season at Purdue, but has played a prominent role ever since. In the past two years, he had averaged 9.1 and 9.3 points per game, and is one of the best three-point shooters in the Big Ten.
He has made at least 38.3 percent of his threes every year, and was at 40.0 percent last season, fifth-best in the nation among all Power 5 schools. He has made 139 three-pointers in his career, and could easily finish in the top-10 all-time in Purdue history with another similar season.
Stefanovic graduated from Purdue last spring with a degree in finance and was on the Big Ten's All-Academic team. He is getting a master's degree in human resources this season.
"I'm super excited to get this opportunity going with the podcast and working with Sports Illustrated Purdue,'' Stefanovic said. "Just connecting with the fans more on a personal level is great.
"Last year was a weird year with no fans in the stands, and I really wanted to give people more of an inside look of what we're doing every day. I can't wait to see more fans in Mackey Arena, and other road venues this year, and I'm really excited about it.''
Stefanovic is back on campus and the Boilermakers have already been working out hard. Three of his teammates – Jaden Ivey, Caleb Furst and Zach Edey – just got back from the Under-19 World Cup in Latvia, where Ivey and Furst and their U.S. teammates went undefeated to win gold and Edey's Canadian team won the bronze, with their only loss to the U.S. in the semifinals.
This Purdue team should be very good, and Stefanovic is thrilled to be sharing it with the Boilermakers fans.
"Yeah, we've been down here on campus for a past few weeks, getting some practices and weight training and individual work in with my teammates,'' Stefanovic said. "We've had a really good start to the summer. We been competitive and gotten after one another. We're really excited to get the season started, get the fall running and get Mackey packed again. We're really excited.''
EDITOR'S NOTE: If you are interested in advertising and sponsorship opportunities with the Sasha Live! podcast, please contact Tom Brew via email at tombrew@hilltop30.com
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Tom Brew is an award-winning journalist who's worked at some America's finest newspapers, including the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Indianapolis Star. He also owns the book publishing company, Hilltop30 Publishing Group, and he has written four books and published 16 others.