Billionaire St. John’s Booster Says He’s All In On Rick Pitino, NIL Commitment After Coach Rescued Program From ‘Irrelevance’

If new coach Rick Pitino is the most important man in the St. John’s basketball program, billionaire St. John’s booster Mike Repole might rank a close second.

Repole, 51, is a 1991 St. John’s graduate who holds an honorary doctorate from the university. The Middle Village, Queens native founded Vitaminwater and Body Armor SuperDrink, which he sold separately to Coca Cola for nearly $10 billion combined. He also owns Repole Stable, which produced Mo Donegal, the horse that won the 2022 Belmont Stakes, and Forte, which was the Kentucky Derby favorite before it was scratched and will next run in the Belmont Stakes.

Repole had a falling out with his alma mater four years ago, when, during an interview with WFAN’s Mike Francesa, he called the environment around St. John’s under former President Bobby Gempesaw “toxic.” At the time he said St. John’s also needed to hire a top-notch basketball coach and pay him.

“This is St. John’s,” he said then. “We have Madison Square Garden. Pay $3-4 million and get yourself a coach that’s going to win.”

Four years later, Repole believes his alma mater has done exactly that by hiring Pitino, who had led three programs to the Final Four and won NCAA championships at Kentucky and Louisville (although the latter was vacated). And he’s on board in a big way with supporting Pitino’s program through Name, Image and Likeness funding. Repole met with Pitino in March near Repole’s home in Boca Raton, Fla., and has already been active in helping Pitino assemble an 11-man recruiting class that includes 10 transfers, sources said.

“[St. John’s athletic director] Mike Cragg is going to come down to Florida shortly and I’ve already made a commitment for basketball through the school and Rick is well aware of that,” Repole said in a wide-ranging phone interview Monday night. “So that’s just through the athletic department and the school and helping with the needs that both basketball will continue to need as we continue to grow the program.”

Repole believes Pitino is a home run hire for St. John’s and called his 11-man recruiting class that was completed Monday with the addition of Kansas transfer forward Zuby Ejiofor “a masterpiece.’

“He’s 70 years old and he’s inspiring me, man,” Repole said. “He’s happy but not content. You would think he’s got his first job as a BU head coach and he’s just got so much passion and so much intensity and he’s just humble and he gets it.

“This is so great for St. John’s. And it’s bigger than that, it’s big for New York.”

At his introductory press conference, Pitino promised to turn around a St. John’s program that hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 2000.

“It’s not about when, or if. It’s going to happen for St. John’s and it’s going to happen in a big way,” Pitino said.

St. John’s is looking to play about 8-9 games at Madison Square Garden next season, and Repole believes they’ll eventually sell out games, just like they did when he was a fan watching Chris Mullin and Walter Berry at the program’s peak in the 1980s.

“It’s just a matter of time,” Repole. “Maybe it’s not the first two games at the Garden, but games 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, there’s no doubt.”

He believes some alumni will “come back because they’re going to be relevant again,” and said Big East rivals like Georgetown, UConn and Villanova will also bring in fans.

“I think the games are going to be higher stakes,” Repole said.

Repole credited St. John’s President Rev. Brian Shanley with hiring Pitino away from Iona after three years (following a two-year stint in Greece after he was fired by Louisville in 2017).

“If it wasn’t for Father [Shanley], this hire wouldn’t happen,” he said. “With the old regime we had, Rick Pitino would not be here. Let’s just give credit where credit is due.”

He said the hire has saved his alma mater from being “irrelevant.”

“To me, St. John’s was getting incredibly close to being irrelevant and I think if they would’ve stayed with the current coach, it was just basically a matter of time, especially with Georgetown and other schools making such big moves,” he said.

“And the Rick Pitino move was like a Hail Mary that basically went from game over, irrelevant to NCAA Tournament, maybe Final Four.”

Repole was heavily involved with the program during the Norm Roberts and Steve Lavin Eras, but believed the university should have target then-Rhode Island coach Danny Hurley instead of former St. John’s legend Chris Mullin in 2015.

“When Chris got the job, I clearly thought Danny Hurley was the most obvious pick and I was pretty vocal about Danny Hurley being the right guy,” Repole, who has a summer home in Rhode Island and knew Hurley, said by phone.

“I thought it was a no-brainer, going from Rhode Island into the Big East was a dream opportunity. And obviously we went with Mullin. No coaching experience, great guy, wanted to do what’s best for the university, but look at him and look at Patrick Ewing and how that turned out.

“And Danny has gone on to become a top-10 coach in all of the NCAAs right now, forget about the Big East.”

Hurley, of course, led UConn to the national championship this season, the school’s fifth.

When St. John’s hired Cragg as athletic director in 2018, Repole said he was “very impressed,” but he also was in favor of the school hiring Bobby Hurley instead of Mike Anderson in 2019.

“I really thought at that time, Bobby Hurley was the right candidate also,” he said. “I thought Bobby was the right guy and I thought St. John’s needed someone that can recruit, somebody that was intense, somebody that was going to be scrappy.”

He said he thought St. John’s “went cheap” in hiring Anderson, who went 68-56 in four seasons with no NCAA Tournament appearances.

“I don’t think they tried to spend the amount of money that it would’ve taken to get Bobby and honestly I think St. John’s is a much better program than Arizona State and I think Bobby would’ve won here and would be great here,” Repole said.

“And they went in another direction and I got on FAN and me and Mike just started talking, and I became Mike from Queens…I got on a 20-minute rant. I still have people come up to me and tell me it was one of the best sports rants they ever heard,” he said with a chuckle.

“When it’s 20 minutes, and you’re talking 19 and a half minutes and Francesa’s only talking 30 seconds, it’s pretty good,” he added.

Anderson is currently suing St. John’s for $45.6 million, arguing the school never paid him the $11.4 million he was owed and used the money to hire Pitino. (St. John’s may end up settling the suit similar to how UConn did with Kevin Ollie, paying him $3.9 million to settle after also paying him $11 million on his buyout.)

“Mike Anderson, his dream job was Arkansas, he’s from Arkansas, and we hired the fired Arkansas coach and we brought him to an area that he was like a fish out of water,” Repole said. After the WFAN interview, Repole backed away from St. John’s and moved to Florida, where he has supported Central Florida’s athletic programs — and says he still will.

“I know the president [Alexander N. Cartwright] really well because I live here and obviously I want to support the local community,” he said of UCF, which moves to the Big 12 next season.

“I’m actually on the advisory committee of the Big 12….UCF is a football school and Johnny Dawkins does a great job [with the men’s basketball team] and now they’re going into the Big 12.

“I have season’s tickets to those games and I have season’s tickets for St. John’s, so I’ll be flying to Madison Square Garden for the St. John’s games and staying down here for the UCF games.”