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John Marinatto passes away

lloyde dobler

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Jan 26, 2004
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Former Big East commissioner John Marinatto died today. Relatively young guy… graduated from Providence in ‘79.

Was SID for the Friars, and appointed AD when Lou Lamoriello left for the Devils. His tenure did not end well, got back on his feet by getting a job across town with the Big East. Somehow managed to get the commissioner job after Tranghese, helped in large part by his strong friendship with Pitino which gave him support from both basketball schools and Louisville. He and Pitino were really, really tight. Pitino’s PC exit obviously went over poorly there, but Marinatto was really his lone remaining friend at the school. He was really a guy who was a prime example of the Peter Principle, not once but twice.
 
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I saw this earlier tonight. John was SID at PC when I was at The Hall, working for WSOU and unofficially helping out John Wooding in the Sports Information office.

Nice man but was probably ill suited for the Commissioner job at any time and especially so during the challenging post-Tranghese years.

May he rest in peace.
 
That's a nice piece by Pete Thamel. Thanks for posting Corny.

Reading Tim Welsh's quote about John reminded me of how we were introduced. I was going to work my first Men's Basketball game for WSOU at the Providence Civic Center. We bused up to Providence with the team on Sunday night for a Monday night game and on Monday morning rode to the arena for the team's walk through.

As my broadcast partner and I were observing things, we were introduced to John who would be our main point of contact for any issue we might encounter as "Honest" John Marinatto.

The shame of it for Marinatto is it didn't matter who was the Commissioner of the Big East when he took over. The league was doomed given the re-structuring of the power conferences that was starting and essentially meant the football and basketball schools could no longer co-exist as they had for so many years. While he may not have been the ideal front man for the league, he was working with a stacked deck.
 
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