Former Eagles star Connor Barwin leaves Wharton with an MBA and a stake in an Italian basketball team

Connor Barwin was in his basement last month, watching his favorite Italian basketball team on the big screen and hanging on every basket. Pallacanestro Trieste’s 17-point lead at halftime soon became a one-point deficit before they rallied and escaped with an eight-point victory.

“I probably lost a couple days of my life from it,” said Barwin, the former Eagles Pro Bowl linebacker.

So it goes when you own the team you’re rooting for and they are fighting to avoid relegation to the league’s second division.

Barwin and five Penn classmates — all of whom graduated this month from the Wharton School’s MBA program for executives — pooled $5 million together in January to purchase 90% of Pallacanestro Trieste. The group, which is called Cotogna Sports Group, aims to build the nearly 50-year-old club into a European power.

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It won’t be easy — a loss last week in the season’s final game ultimately dropped Trieste next season to Italy’s second tier — but CSG is in it for the long haul. And that means more stressful times for Barwin in his Philadelphia basement.

“It’s why I’m still involved with sports. There’s nothing like it,” said Barwin, who now works for the Eagles as the team’s director of player development. “I sort of lived through that game with the fans and everyone with the team.”

Last year, a sports-management professor at Wharton told a group of students at the program’s San Francisco campus that an Italian team was for sale. They had talked in class about one day owning a team. Now they had a chance.

“It started out as kind of an experiment. ‘Oh, that’s cool. Let’s look into it,’” said Fitzann Reid. “And it turned into us actually owning the team, which is incredible.”

The initial group — Reid, Prab Sekhon, Richard Johnson, Richard De Meo, and John Jefferies — reached out to Barwin, who completed his courses in Philly, to see if the 10-year NFL veteran was interested. He was in.

“I think every player who plays at a high level sort of dreams about being an owner but we sort of correlate it to like, ‘You have to make so much money for it to be possible,’ because my network is the NFL and the NBA and those teams are worth billions of dollars,” Barwin said. “It’s something I always thought about but didn’t necessarily think was possible. But the same is true about being a professional football player. In the world I grew up in, it wasn’t possible to be a professional football player. I just loved playing football. Eventually, I got a scholarship to college. Once I got to college, I was pretty good. Then it was like, ‘Oh crap, maybe I can be a professional football player.’”

CSG assumed control of Trieste halfway through the 30-game Serie A season. The roster was already constructed and the staff was in place. There was little the new owners could do but watch — and stress — as the team tried to avoid relegation by not finishing the season as one of the league’s three worst teams.

De Meo said relegation “simply costs us a year” and does not change the group’s long-term goals. The second-to-last finish hasn’t soured CSG as it is already looking to buy more sports teams, including some lower-tier Italian soccer clubs.

“We’re shooting for more deals and bigger deals,” De Meo said. “For timing, we want to set Trieste up for success for next season and then I think eyes will turn more seriously and with more intent to the next deal. We have a few things that we’re starting to look at.”

The owners issued a statement to fans after the season’s final game, saying they were “deeply disappointed” but promised changes that would lead to a “renaissance.”

That’s where Barwin comes in. He is leading the search for Trieste’s new general manager. The ownership group wants to inject analytics and data — something CSG says is much less prevalent in Italian basketball than it is in American sports — and modernize the team’s approach to roster construction. Barwin has connected with NBA scouts and executives who think that way.

“I sort of lived in pre-analytics when I got into the NFL to where everyone is using it in the NFL but to different degrees and some a lot better than others,” said Barwin, who entered the NFL in 2009. “I credit Howie Roseman and Jeffrey Lurie and the coaches I played for and Nick Sirianni.

“It’s easy to say, ‘We’re going to start using analytics and there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit and we’re going to find edges.’ Some of that is true. But this is still a sport, right? The one thing I’ve learned is the recognition of that — looking at the objective data and the subjective data is really important. You can’t be all-in on either one. They both need to be handled with care and valued. That’s where you give yourself a competitive advantage in American sports, Italian sports, or anywhere. It’s really hard to do.”

Barwin grew up outside Detroit, went to college in Cincinnati — Jason Kelce was among his teammates — and spent his first four NFL seasons in Houston. But Philadelphia is where Barwin calls home and where he and his wife, Laura, are raising their two children.

He puts on a concert every summer to support his Make The World Better Foundation, which has rejuvenated playgrounds across the city. He produced last year’s hit Christmas album featuring Eagles players that raised more than $1 million for charity and he works for the team that defines the city.

The 36-year-old Barwin has immersed himself in Philadelphia. He even used to ride SEPTA to South Philly when he played for the Birds (2013-16). His degree from Wharton — one of the city’s educational pillars — only deepens that bond.

“It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life but also one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done,” said Barwin, who graduates on Saturday from the two-year program. “I’m so happy to be done but so thankful. You love being in a locker room and we’re all so competitive. You know you’re in a great locker room where it’s that competitive, but people are trying to help each other. I walked off the football field and a year later, walked into the classroom and that same sort of environment. I don’t take that for granted. You don’t get that at every school. I was really, really challenged, but there’s tons of people there who helped me a lot. I hope I helped a couple.

“A lot of my success for the last 10, 15 years was because of what I was physically able to do. I know I have 30 more years of trying to add value, make the world better, and do things to help people. I thought I needed to learn some hard skills, and what better way than to go to Wharton and do it?”

Nearly all Italian basketball teams are owned by Italians, making CSG’s owners aware that they would immediately be deemed as outsiders. Reid said the Wharton students were OK with that.

“We didn’t want to be like the Americans who know it all and tell people what to do,” Reid said. “No, this team has infrastructure that has been built out and has been successful. They have great players. Everything is working. Except they need some help. We feel like we’re the people that can help them.”

De Meo said CSG wants to “bring the club forward” with an “American approach.” First, the owners learned that not everything in America will work in Italy. Sorry, no halftime shows.

“There’s a crazy fan group with drums, yelling and screaming, and chanting,” Reid said. “There’s no way we can ask them to be quiet for a halftime show. That just doesn’t happen. We went out there and met the fan group. They’re super passionate. They have their kids painted in red from the age of 5. These kids are going crazy. And it’s true, from the time the game starts to the time the game ends, these guys do not stop yelling. There’s no way to tell them to be quiet for 20 minutes to do the halftime show.”

They’ll instead focus on analytics, scouting, nutrition, and sports psychology. The team, which was founded in 1975, had its best season 30 years ago when it finished in third place. But CSG thinks Trieste can climb all the way to EuroLeague, the continent’s top tier. First, they’ll have to advance next season from Serie A2. Perhaps the team’s first offseason under CSG’s control can provide the difference.

“Once we hire the GM, ownership is supposed to hire people, sort of set the direction, set the core values, and hold them accountable,” Barwin said. “I think that’s what we’re going to do and then sort of step back and let leadership run the team.”

Barwin was a standout basketball player at his Detroit high school and walked onto the basketball team in college even though he was at Cincinnati to play football. Some of his hoops teammates followed their college careers by turning pro in Europe, providing Barwin with an understanding of how it worked overseas.

But he wasn’t fully aware of how passionate some of those European fans can be. And that’s what helped draw him and his classmates to Trieste, a coastal city near Italy’s border with Slovenia. The rabid fan base, Barwin said, was “probably the No. 1 reason why I thought it was a great idea and a great business to get involved in.”

They weren’t buying a team in need of fans. Instead, they were buying a team that regularly fills its arena and plays with a soccer-like fan group — Curva Nord — leading the way.

“I think Connor understands the special relationship sports clubs, sports franchises have with the fans,” De Meo said. “He woke us up to that before we bought the team. That’s something we hadn’t thought about. We were very focused on spreadsheets, numbers, negotiations, and building a business strategy. He was sort of the fan whisperer, in some ways.”

The group wants to attract more fans — “Even the Eagles want more fans,” Barwin said — but it at least has a base to work with. The owners are looking into a way to stream Trieste games in America as Barwin said U.S. basketball fans will love the product.

The team plays once a week for 40 minutes and every game matters with relegation on the line. It’s like the NFL, Barwin said. Just imagine how much more intense the NFL would be if the last-place teams dropped to the XFL.

“Every game means so much,” Barwin said.

Barwin has been to Italy twice since the Eagles season ended. He has watched his team play and felt the passion of the fans. Back home, he rides the waves with them.

His wife and kids — 5-year-old West and 2-year-old Vera — are on board as they watch with him in the basement. A year ago, Vera learned how to say “Fly Eagles Fly.” Now she knows Curva Norda’s chant of “Tri-es-te, Tri-es-te.” And maybe she can ease her father’s stress next season as they watch their favorite Italian team try to climb to the top.