Fordham Rams Coach Mike Magpayo: ‘Basketball is in my blood’
By Cristina DC Pastor
A ‘The FilAm’ Exclusive
Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood…
Mike Magpayo recalled how he and his wife Caroline were listening to Billy Joel’s New York anthem and “tearing up” as they were moving out of the Big City in 2014.
Except that it was not a short-term holiday. They would be gone for more than10 years. Mike, now 45, was about to take on a coaching position at North Carolina’s Campbell University (2014 to 2017). This would be followed by engagements at the University of San Francisco (2017-2018), and UC Riverside (2018 to 2025), leading UCR to two 20-win seasons.
Now blessed with two boys — 4-year-old Luka and 2-year-old Milo — the Magpayos are back in Mike’s “favorite city” to take on the job as head coach of Fordham University Rams men’s basketball team. It would mean returning to where he began his coaching career as an assistant at Columbia University (2010-2014) and meeting his future mentor and friend Kyle Smith, now a coach at Stanford.
He recalled how he got into Columbia. He was CEO a real estate company that went from 40 down to 12 employees during the real estate crash of 2007 to 2009. He was looking to move to NYC to take up his master’s in real estate at NYU. As he had always coached high school basketball on the side even while being the CEO, he wrote letters to all the college coaches in N.Y. and he got one response, and that was from Smith.
“I volunteered for a bit and he ended up hiring me as the bottom spot on his new staff. I was fortunate to learn from one of the best,” he said in an email interview with The FilAm.
New York City is his “favorite city in the world.”
“It’s why I aggressively pursued this opportunity,” he shared when introduced to the Fordham community and the media on April 2 at the Rose Hill Gym. “I was sick to my stomach every day through the process, hoping for the chance to lead this program. And when (Fordham Director of Athletics) Charles (Guthrie) called me, everything froze and tears streamed down my face. They were tears of joy.”
Born in L.A. to immigrant parents
Magpayo tells The FilAm he was born in Los Angeles, the second oldest of five siblings.
“I am always amazed how my parents Lito and Nenet Magpayo moved to the U.S. as immigrants and were able to build a life for the five Magpayo siblings,” he said.
His mother, who grew up in Pampanga, worked for the U.S. Census Bureau. His Manila-born father — and this probably explains his early fascination with hoops — worked at CBS Sports and covered NBA and NCAA Basketball growing up as a video engineer.
“My dad, just like most Filipinos, loved basketball and I played at a very young age. It is the national sport of the Philippines. It’s in my blood,” he said.
Rock of the family
Magpayo met his FilAm wife Caroline in 2013 when he was coaching at Columbia and she was getting her master’s degree in Social Work at NYU. “She is the rock of our family, an amazing mother to (our two sons).”
Caroline was with him from North Carolina to San Francisco and then to UC Riverside, their home in the last seven years where she began raising their “two little monsters” Luka and Milo. She may be “little but she packs a punch.”
The two boys, he said jokingly, will have to toughen up in NYC having been raised to the cushy lifestyle of Southern California.
Building a community
At Fordham, his goal is not only to build a team but also a community that “feels like home.”
“Community is everything. In fact when my wife and I were talking about what makes this position so attractive for us it was that we would have a built-in community with two of my best friends in coaching and their families, my former staff mates, Dan Geriot and Kevin Hovde, who are the head coaches at Iona and Columbia, respectively.”
His standard for players is one where they have “great attitudes, great work ethics, and who really, really want to be here and wear Fordham University across their chests…We aren’t just developing great basketball players, we’re into character and culture.”
His team “will push to have a high performing mindset,” he said. He quoted Miami Heat coach Eric Spoelstra, also a FilAm and a friend, who said ‘How you do anything is how you do everything.’
“We believe that,” said Magpayo at his April 2 press conference. “It will be a very very demanding program. It’s not all peaches and ice cream. We’re gonna go hard, how we prepare, how we execute a gameplan.”
Magpayo is said to be the first Division I men’s basketball coach of Asian descent in the NCAA. A Fordham statement says he founded and serves as the president of the Asian Coaches Association, an organization that serves to “unify, support and elevate all Asian coaches beyond just the basketball community.”
Fordham President Tania Tetlow welcomed Magpayo praising his accomplishments.
She said, “When he took over UC Riverside, the program was struggling. Just two winning seasons in two decades. Under his leadership that changed dramatically. In five seasons he delivered four winning records, two 20-win seasons and the school’s first-ever berth in the NIT (National Invitation Tournament). That kind of transformation doesn’t happen by accident. It takes vision, grit and the ability to inspire those around you.”
Circling back to New York, Magpayo’s relationship with Fordham begins.
