Saturday evening, St. The University of John’s basketball ended a 25-year-old drought by clicking the Big East tournament.
As the team cut the nets in celebrating their title and a wonderful two-year-old turn under coach Rick Pitino-Mike Reppole looked at the floor in Madison Square Garden.
He headed to the airport after the game, the Queens ‘locals’ trip was lit by the Empire State Building made in the red and white school.
The screen was both poetic and reckless. Rare John has returned.
“It was amazing,” Repole told me, who graduated from school in 1991, he told me. “Did I know how I would feel? Did I know how New York would feel? Did I know how to make other people feel they had no idea.”
Repole is not just a fan, anyway. The self-made billionaire has donated at least seven figures to this year’s team and stimulated other believers to open their own pocket books.
His money made it possible for coach Rick Pitino to recruit athletes like Kadary Richmond and RJ Luis. Few have been just as important – or visible – like Repole, 55, in this new era of college sports, where student athletes are able to compensate under black rules (name, image and similarity) and move freely in other schools through the transfer portal.
Rarely reported that John’s has a bad salary of about $ 4 million, believed to be no. 1 in the Great East.
“College sports have always been a business. John’s human ATM.
But his support, he insists, is not “transactional”.
No. This is personal for him. Growing up in the Middle Village, he dreamed of being Mets GM or St. coach. John’s – who, for decades, was a shocked but brave program under stars like Chris Mulli and Mark Jackson and legendary coach Lou Carnesseca.
On the contrary, first-generation American-replete parents are Italian immigrants-studied sports management and became an entrepreneur, establishing beverages like vitamins Water and body, both he sold in Coca, for $ 4.1 and 5.6 billion dollars, respect.
Not that he carries himself as a billionaire displayed.
“Instead of wearing Tom Ford I dress like Adam Sandler. And I’m happy with her. I have the same friends for 45 years. I call my parents every night,” Repole said.
He has always been a fan of Johnnies, but he has never again kept his disappointment for school leadership during their desert time. (This is a man who owns a brand of clothing called Nobull, after all
In a 2019 call with Mike Francesca, WFAN, school officials withdrew as they searched for a coach after sharing ways with Chris Mulli – duplicating them – Incompet, Clueless. “
He phoned inside, he says, not as a billionaire booster, but as Mike from the middle village, stripping the fierce love “from the heart”.
In 2021, a very necessary change came when Father Brian Shanley, once of Providence College, was employed as president and made a bold act. He hired Pitino.
The legendary coach came with luggage. A 2009 Sordid criminal case revealed that a woman had tried to extort her for sex and he had paid for her to have an abortion. In 2017, his assistant to the coach at the University of Louisville was found guilty in a sex scandal for playing-led to the 2013 team championship title.
But Shanley was ready to take a chance, and Repole and his happy wallet were reunited.
How much is ready to continue to spend,,, The billionaire said to the post: “I will do whatever it takes.”
His other passion is Ponies, and he is taking 10 of them to Derby Kentucky. But nothing has renovated Repole like the red storm, he said.
“I didn’t become younger this year, but I became much more youthful,” he told this season. “This turned me into a simpler time … The ability to get back and just feel New York again and feel what I felt like a child?
“I haven’t had this feeling in New York for a long, long time,” said Repole, who moved to Florida five years ago.
He is not alone. It is the 75-year-old who stopped to retire on the street to thank him, the story of old friends who are now reunited for traveling to MSG, and numerous generations of family members associated with Johnnies-including his 84-year-old father and 9-year-old.
Then it’s me: a tall fan of St. John who has been red, although Alma Mater my girlfriend, Providence, is a conference rival. Oh boy, I couldn’t stop thanking.
In my 21 years in the post, there has never been a question for St. John’s stories to move out of sports sites.
But this season, their return has ruled both back and captured Zeitgeist. Big East Champs regularly sold Garden Madison Square. Spike Lee has been in court. Earlier this month, when Piino was in The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon and the teams even performed a now red viral sea sea.
The buzzing is obvious.
“We are Kardashians of College basketball,” Repole said with laughter. But there are no filters or filters. Grit, passion and ruthless protection of this team is 100% authentic.
It credits the Piino training style. And the good Catholic boy, who regularly calls Pad Pio, cannot forget his hair from the program patriarch, Carnesecca – who died in November, a shy month of his 100th birthday.
“Almostny almost as if he was not read to go until the team was in the right place. And finally after 25 years, the team is in the right place,” Repole said, adding that Looie has been here all the time. “
Next is the big dance. Rare John’s, no. 2, Seed will take Omaha in Providence Thursday night.
Remembering his teenage years sitting in the fictional blue places of the MSG nasal section, joking that there was only one problem.
“Now I have spent the whole tournament either in the first or second rows, you know, with Rick walking in front of me,” he said. “This is my biggest complaint. It blocks my opinion.”
Man, whose guide mantra is “Think great, dream the greatest” has a new March madness: “Why not us?”
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Image Source : nypost.com