How VitaminWater billionaire Mike Repole helped take St. Johns to March Madness: Not transactional
On Saturday night, St.John’s University basketball ended a 25-year drought, clinching the Big East Tournament.As the team cut down the nets in celebration — of their title and a miraculous two-year turnaround under Coach Rick Pitino — Mike Repole watched in awe from the floor at Madison Square Garden.Headed to the airport after the game, the Queens native’s journey was lit by the Empire State Building done up in the school’s red and white.The display was both poetic and undeniable.
St.John’s is back.“It was amazing,” Repole, who graduated from the school in 1991, told me.
“Did I know how I was gonna feel? Did I know how New York was gonna feel? Did I know how it was going to make other people feel? I had no idea.”Repole’s not just any fan, though.The self-made billionaire has donated at least seven figures to this year’s team and incentivized other faithful to open their pocketbooks.His money made it possible for Coach Rick Pitino to recruit athletes like Kadary Richmond and RJ Luis.
Few have been as pivotal — or visible — as Repole, 55, in this wild new era of college sports, where student athletes are able to be compensated under NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) rules and move freely to other schools through the transfer portal.St.John’s reportedly has an NIL payroll of around $4 million, believed to be No.
1 in the Big East.“College sports has always been a business.Now it’s being shared in different ways,” said Repole about turning himself into St.
John’s human ATM.But his support, he insists, is “not transactional.”Nope.This is personal for him.
Growing up in Middle Village, he dreamed of being the GM of the Mets or the coach of St.John’s — which, for decades, was a vaunted but gritty program under stars like Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson and legendary coach Lou Carnesseca.Instead, the first-generation American — Repole’s parents are Italian immigrants— studied sports management and became an entrepren...