Steven Ruiz Leaving The Ringer for Fox Sports
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN — Billionaire St. John’s alum Mike Repole stood atop a black stage on the court at Madison Square Garden, which was covered in red, white, and blue confetti.
The Red Storm had just won their first Big East tournament in 25 years, securing a two-seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament, and Repole watched team members from his alma mater climb a ladder and cut down pieces of the basketball net as part of the ceremonious tournament championship ritual. He didn’t push through the crowd on the hardwood, appearing perfectly content watching from a few feet back, snapping iPhone pictures, shaking hands, and smiling from a short distance.
His presence may have been unassuming that night, but he’s been an integral piece of the Johnnies’ success this year. When the school hired legendary head coach Rick Pitino in 2023, “I let [St. John’s] know that, listen, you guys would have my cooperation to do whatever it takes to help the university get back in the national spotlight,” Repole tells Front Office Sports.
St. John’s used to be a fixture of college basketball excellence in the 1980s and 1990s, when they were led by legendary, sweater-wearing coach Lou Carnesecca. Since then, the team has struggled to find leadership—running through almost a dozen coaches since Carnesecca left in 1992. But in 2023, Repole helped enlist Pitino—and has since donated millions in NIL (name, image, and likeness) money to help with recruiting efforts.
Along with the new leadership of the university president, Rev. Brian Shanley, hired in 2021, and athletic director Ed Kull, hired in 2024, Repole and Pitino have ushered in a new era by embracing all of college sports’ new rules: allowing NIL deals and unrestricted transfers.
“[St. John’s] has got some benefactors who are clearly very passionate about the program—want to see them be successful,” Big East commissioner Val Ackerman told FOS after the trophy ceremony. “In this environment, you’ve got to have a few of those guys. And they’ve got one key guy; they’ve got some others. This success, I think, will bring about other good outcomes for them.”
Since graduating from St. John’s in 1991, Repole had been an enthusiastic supporter of the university. He’s a member of The Founder’s Society, which includes alumni and others who have donated at least $1 million to the school. But he was also a huge basketball fan and known for helping students with their entrepreneurial aspirations.
In 2019, the Johnnies hired Mike Anderson to replace Chris Mullin—a legendary St. John’s player whose success couldn’t translate to coaching—in a move described at the time as “bizarre.”
But for Repole, Anderson’s hiring was the last straw. During a rant on the Mike Francesca show in April 2019, he called the culture “toxic” and the leadership “clueless.” It represented a public falling-out with the school, which lasted until Anderson was fired in 2023.
“My frustration was more about using the success of athletics to really grow enrollment,” he says. He emphasizes that he wants the entire university to thrive—and his support of the basketball program is because the team is the school’s “front porch.”
Repole saw an opportunity to rejoin the basketball fold in 2023. He had his eyes on a particular coaching target: Rick Pitino. “I know Rick over 20 years personally,” Repole says, referencing the times the two men have run into each other in the horse-racing community. “To me, he’s a living legend.”
Pitino has coached men’s college hoops on and off since the 1970s. He’s the only men’s coach to win a national championship with two teams (Louisville and Kentucky);the only one to lead three teams to the Final Four (Louisville, Kentucky, and Providence); and the only one to lead five to conference tournament championships. He’s also had professional stints with the Knicks and Celtics as well as overseas.
By all accounts, the New York native is an “old school” coach. He’s one of the few who still insists on a suit and tie on game days, stalking the sidelines with his hands clasped behind his back and yelling at players even when the Johnnies are enjoying a double-digit lead. He’s known for colorful rants when players aren’t meeting expectations, and he has survived scandals that took place before his current players had ever stepped onto a high school court.
His first job back on an NCAA campus was leading Iona in 2020, a small university in Westchester County, N.Y.. He took the little-known school on an impressive 2023 Cinderella run. Repole, for his part, wanted Pitino to move to a team a short train ride away—to Queens.
The Johnnies took a chance on the decorated coach with the checkered past, offering him a rumored six-year, $20 million contract. From the day Pitino’s hiring was announced on March 20, 2023, complete with a press conference at Madison Square Garden, Repole was back. NIL was a new concept at the time, he says, but he understood Pitino would need financial help recruiting players in this new era. (Repole doesn’t have a say in recruiting or making offers; instead, he provides the resources that Pitino may need to make sure he lands the right players.)
The teamwork paid off. The Johnnies started winning, and Repole resumed his in-person presence. In February 2024, midseason, Repole announced a seven-figure NIL commitment to athletes—partially to ride the excitement of the team’s season, but also partially to attract more recruits the following year.
The program went deep in the Big East tournament, but missed March Madness by a razor-thin margin. Basketball talking heads, coaches, and Big East fans alike considered it a major snub.
But the table had been set.
While other coaches lamented the chaos created by the unrestricted transfer portal and burgeoning NIL collective landscape, Pitino was busy using it to his advantage.
At Big East media day on Oct. 23, 2024, Pitino told reporters he doesn’t have a problem with either phenomenon. “In some respects, it makes my job easier; in some respects, it doesn’t. I probably will never go to a young man’s home again. We just go straight to the negotiating table at St. John’s.”
This past offseason, the Red Storm spent about $4 million on the current team, according to multiple reports. The number is on par with what power conference programs need to stay competitive, one expert source tells FOS. Kull, who was hired that October, declined to confirm the number, explaining that given all the disparate revenue streams and NIL collectives going to his players, he simply wasn’t privy to the aggregate figure. (Part of the NIL earnings: a six-part docuseries on the Red Storm’s 2024–2025 season on Vice TV.)
Pitino put together the fourth-ranked recruiting class of the 2024 offseason. The crown jewel: Seton Hall guard Kadary Richmond, the No. 1 recruit available in the transfer portal. Pitino said in January that, if Richmond had been offered a similar seven-figure NIL package to stay at Seton Hall, he would’ve remained in New Jersey.
Throughout the season, the program became a force. They climbed the AP poll rankings, reaching the seventh spot in February—their highest in 33 years. As fervor built, they moved several games from the modest Carnesecca arena on campus to the Garden—and the venue started selling out, even against some of the conference’s weakest teams.
“I think what I found out the last three, four months, is how many people stopped going to the games and are now going again,” Repole tells FOS. “I’m watching father and son, parents and daughters going to the game, and kids. I’m bringing my 9-year-old daughter, Gioia, to the UConn game. And I brought her to the Bahamas to watch them play.”
Kull calls Repole’s influence “a lightning rod.” He’s almost taken on an NIL ambassadorship role, rallying fans and fellow alums to embrace NIL. Repole, himself, has become a permanent fixture behind the St. John’s bench—a seat he says has a great view, “other than when Rick walks in front of me, I can’t see the court, I gotta move him.”
In early February, Repole announced he would match up to $1 million in NIL donations to the Flat Top Fund, one of the St. John’s collectives. By the middle of March, more than $657,000 had been raised, Kull says, noting all the donors were new.
“It was never really the amount,” Repole says. “It was just about rallying the fan base, rallying the alumni to say, hey, if you’re enjoying this little pep rally we’re having and you want it to happen in the next 5 or 10 years, and not every 40 years, you know what? This is how you can participate.”
Throughout the entire week of the Big East tournament this season, Repole could be seen enjoying the fruits of his investment—even before the confetti fell. He sat behind the bench during all three games. After the quarterfinal, he roamed the bowels of Madison Square Garden, a small posse in tow, laughing with reporters. He even posted a picture from the tournament joking that he was drawing up plays with Pitino.
The Johnnies ended the regular season with the No. 6 AP poll ranking and a projected two-seed in the NCAA tournament, which they secured on Selection Sunday. (They’ve also earned national attention with an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and feature coverage from The New York Times and GQ.) “Making the tournament was something we definitely wanted and expected,” Kull says. “But to be sixth in the country to win our first Big East title in 40 years—we’re probably a little ahead of schedule.”
After the trophy presentation and ceremonial net-cutting, Pitino pushed back against headlines suggesting Repole single-handedly bought him a winning team.
“NIL didn’t get us this team,” he told reporters. “You build a team by making sure you understand the whole puzzle of what goes into it, and people just mischaracterize the NIL and why St. John’s has been built. St. John’s didn’t get built by the NIL. St. John’s got built with the character of the players.”
He noted two of the tournament’s biggest stars, RJ Luis Jr. and Zuby Ejiofor (who both also transferred to St. John’s last season), were “underpaid”—though he joked they’d likely be asking for more after this season’s performance.
Now, the Johnnies are headed to Providence for a late tip-off round-of-64 matchup Friday night against No. 15 Omaha. They don’t have an easy path to San Antonio—John Calipari’s Arkansas and Todd Golden’s Florida are both in their region.
But despite what happens on the court, Kull, Repole, and the rest of the St. John’s informal NIL team of collective operators and lawyers is ensuring players can earn money both through their March Madness run and beyond.
“St. John’s is taking the ‘Power 4’ approach [to NIL] and applying it to a Big East school,” attorney Dan Lust, who works closely with St. John’s on NIL matters, tells FOS. “Ed and the school work very closely with the collectives to maximize NIL. They have put a big emphasis on apparel partnerships to take advantage of this run … and have deals in place to capitalize on any viral moments during the tournament.”
Kull says St. John’s will fully participate in the upcoming revenue-sharing era if the House v. NCAA settlement is approved.
“I think we’re all trying to navigate the unknown of the future,” Kull says of how to maintain this success in college sports’ next era. “The portal opens up again on March 24th. We’re trying to be prepared and ready to go—even Mike’s match is really in preparation for the next season. You hate saying that … but that’s the craziness that we’re dealing with. And it is professional sports.”
