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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 entrepreneur, founding beverage brands like Vitamin Water and Bodyarmor, both of which he sold to Coca-Cola, for $4.1 and $5.6 billion, respectively.
Not that he carries himself as a showy billionaire.
“Instead of wearing Tom Ford I dress like Adam Sandler. And I’m happy with it. I’ve got the same friends for 45 years. I call my parents every night,” said Repole.
He’s always been a Johnnies fan, but he’s never held back his frustration over the school’s leadership during their time in the desert. (This is a man who owns an apparel brand called Nobull, after all.)
In a 2019 call with WFAN’s Mike Francesca, Repole lambasted school officials as they searched for a coach after parting ways with Chris Mullin — dubbing them “incompetent, clueless.”
He phoned in, he says, not as a billionaire booster, but as Mike from Middle Village, dishing out tough love “from the heart.”
In 2021, a much-needed change came when Father Brian Shanley, formerly of Providence College, was hired as president and made a bold move. He hired Pitino.
The legendary coach came with baggage. A sordid 2009 criminal case revealed a woman had tried to extort him for sex and he had paid for her to have an abortion. In 2017, his assistant coach at the University of Louisville was found guilty in a sex-for-play scandal — leading to the team’s 2013 championship title being vacated. (Pitino was later cleared in the federal investigation.)
But Shanley was willing to take a chance, and Repole and his wallet happily rejoined the fold.
As for how much he’s willing to keep spending, the billionaire told The Post: “I’m going to commit whatever it takes.”
His other passion is the ponies, and he’s taken 10 of them to the Kentucky Derby. But nothing has rejuvenated Repole like the Red Storm, he said.
“I didn’t get any younger this year but I got a lot more youthful,” he said of this season. “It brought me back to a simpler time … the ability to come back and just feel New York again and feel what I felt as a kid? It’s giving me chills.
“I haven’t had this feeling in New York in a long, long time,” said Repole, who moved to Florida five years ago.
He’s not alone. There’s the 75-year-old who stopped Repole on the street to thank him, stories of old friends who are now reuniting for trips to MSG, and multiple generations of family members bonding over the Johnnies — including his 84-year-old father and 9-year-old daughter, Gioia.
Then there’s me: a lifelong St John’s fan who has remained defiantly red, even though my beloved alma mater, Providence, is a conference rival. Oh boy, I couldn’t stop thanking him.
In my 21 years at The Post, there has never been a demand for St. John’s stories to move out of the sports pages.
But this season, their comeback has both ruled the backpage and captured the zeitgeist. The Big East champs regularly sold out Madison Square Garden. Spike Lee has been courtside. Earlier this month, when Pitino was on “The Tonight Show,” Jimmy Fallon and the team even performed a now viral Red Storm-themed sea shanty.
The buzz is palpable.
“We’re the Kardashians of college basketball,” Repole said with a laugh. But there’s no filler or filters. This team’s grit, passion and relentless defense is 100% authentic.
He credits Pitino’s no excuses coaching style. And the good Catholic boy, who regularly invokes Padre Pio, can’t forget the heavenly assist from the program’s patriarch, Carnesecca — who died in November, a month shy of his 100th birthday.
“It’s almost like he wasn’t ready to go until the team was in the right place. And finally after 25 years, the team is in the right place,” said Repole, adding that Looie “has been here the whole time” watching.
Up next is the Big Dance. St. John’s, the West’s No. 2, seed will take on Omaha in Providence on Thursday night.
Recalling his teen years sitting in the fabled blue seats of MSG’s nosebleed section, Repole joked there was just one problem.
“Now I’ve spent the whole tournament either first or second row, you know, with Rick walking in front of me,” he said. “That’s my biggest complaint. He blocks my view.”
The man whose guiding mantra is “think big, dream bigger” has a new one for March Madness: “Why not us?”
