Email this page  Print this page  Comments

Tough Enough

He is hosting a traditional Rhode Island clambake that will serve up 275 lobsters, fifty chickens, sixty pounds of chorizo, 250 pounds of red bliss potatoes, 260 ears of corn, five bushels of Maine clams, seven bushels of Prince Edward Island mussels and vats of Rhode Island clear-broth clam chowder. His 200 guests are gathered under a white and green striped tent in Newport’s Fort Adams. The sun setting over Jamestown casts a magical light upon the sailboats still gliding across Narragansett Bay.

Photo Dana Smith

(page 1 of 3)

The clambake is one of Marinatto’s first official acts since taking over as commissioner of the Big East Conference, one of the nation’s major athletic leagues of sixteen colleges and universities located east of the Mississippi River. Formerly second in command, he is now presiding over three days of meetings and festivities in August centering on the conference’s eight schools that play big-time college football.

Marinatto cannot take credit for the perfect weather — it was foggy the last two years the clambake was held — but he will take responsibility for the lack of mosquitoes. Three years ago the insects plagued guests so Marinatto made sure this year that the grounds were sprayed well in advance.

It is the details that have taken Marinatto a long way.

Few Rhode Islanders realize how far one of their own has risen. The Big East is associated with high-octane football bowls and Madison Square Garden basketball tournaments. Yet it is based in Providence’s Jewelry District and run by a former Federal Hill altar boy.

“It is an incredible story for Rhode 
Island, but it is even more incredible when you put it in the context of national athletics,” says Dan Gavitt, the son of Dave Gavitt, the former Providence College basketball coach who founded 
the Big East.

Marinatto is poised to have a key role in deciding the fate of college football’s controversial Bowl Championship Series, the BCS, and basketball’s famous March Madness tournament.

Friends say it could not have happened to a nicer guy. And yet, even at this pinnacle of achievement, something is missing for John Marinatto. He had his dream job in athletics and then he lost it nine years go. How long did it take him to get over the loss?

He stares at you and replies, “I’ll tell you when that happens.”

ohn Marinatto was always the altar boy for 6 a.m. Mass because his house was directly across the street from Holy Ghost Church on Federal Hill. When it snowed and the church was empty, he would ask the priest if he needed to show up. “God is still in the church,” replied the priest.

When he was nine his house was taken for the construction of Route 10 and the family moved to Silver Lake. He went to Holy Ghost Elementary and then Our Lady of Providence, and until he was a 
senior in high school he thought he would be a priest.

He liked “Star Trek,” Cher and sports, particularly the Red Sox and the PC Friars of the 1970s with Marvin Barnes and Ernie D.

He could not play — he had asthma — so he became the student manager for the high school basketball team. That pro-vided his entree as student manager at Providence College for Dave Gavitt.

Michael Tranghese, then the sports information director, took a liking to John and gave him some advice: “You need to make yourself so that Dave feels that he can’t do without you.”

Gavitt smoked Kools. Marinatto, who still neither smokes or drinks, always had two spare packs in his pocket for Gavitt. After games Marinatto took young Dan and his brother home. He moved into the house when their parents took trips. “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know John,” says Dan Gavitt. “He was like an older brother to us.”

Gavitt was the coach and athletic director and in Marinatto’s second year he asked his student manager to line up three basketball games for next season. It was a highly unusual request, but Tranghese remembers that Marinatto earned that trust. “John demonstrated a high 
level of responsibility and the ability to get things done,” he says.

When Marinatto was nearing graduation, Gavitt asked his young assistant about his career plans.

“I want your job,” Marinatto replied. Gavitt was taken aback. But it was an extraordinary time of transition; the Big East was about to be born.

At the Hotel Viking in Newport, behind the stage and a podium in the main conference room, hangs a huge red, white and blue banner of the Big East. The banners of the conference’s eight football schools are above tables on each side of the stage. More than 100 sports reporters from Sports Illustrated, ESPN, the New York Times and regional newspapers, television stations and blogs are waiting in the audience. The new commissioner will speak and then reporters can question the football coaches and select players who are attending the Big East’s Media Day.

The dark suit Marinatto is wearing today does a better job of cloaking his broad frame than the maroon jersey at last night’s clambake. He tells the crowd that it is a special honor to stand here today in the path of Dave Gavitt and Mike Tranghese. “I was in a room thirty years ago and thirty miles from here where the original founding members pledged 
to get this conference started,” he reminds them.