ST. PAUL, Minn. — In Division III college football, few rivalries match the one between the University of St. Thomas and St. John’s University, two Catholic institutions in Minnesota. Their football games have long attracted some of the largest crowds and cheekiest T-shirts in Division III. That showed last month when an overflow crowd of 19,508 fans jammed Allianz Field, home to Minnesota United of Major League Soccer, for the annual game between the Tommies and the Johnnies.
On a warm, sunny fall day, the atmosphere sizzled. Enthusiastic St. Thomas students in purple-and-white scarves filled a section behind one end zone, where United’s chanting, singing regulars normally stand. On the Great Lawn north of the stadium, hundreds of fans in Johnnie red and Tommie purple mingled around beer tents and sampled burgers and tacos from food trucks.
Tommie fans left doubly disappointed, first by the 38-20 loss to St. John’s, and second knowing that this rivalry — which dates to to Thanksgiving Day of 1901 — may be ending.
St. Thomas announced last spring it was leaving the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, its home since the conference’s founding in 1920. U.S.T. chose to depart before the conference’s members — who made their intentions of booting the university clear — voted to kick out the school to make the league more equitable.
Last season, the U.S.T. men’s and women’s athletics programs won the MIAC All-Sports Trophies — an award given to the university with the best collective finishes across all varsity sports — for the 12th consecutive year.
That run was not a surprise. St. Thomas spends more on athletics — about $4.9 million in 2017-18, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Education — than any MIAC school. Its undergraduate enrollment of about 6,200 is twice that of its nearest MIAC competitor. Two years ago, its football team routed three conference opponents by a combined score of 244-0.
In the eyes of their peers, the Tommies are too good for their own good. The MIAC allowed St. Thomas to remain through the 2020-21 season while it found a new home.
Yet instead of seeking another Division III conference, St. Thomas chose a bold, unusual path: petitioning the N.C.A.A. for a waiver to reclassify directly to Division I in 2021. The transition normally takes 12 years, including a minimum of five years of competition in Division II.
The N.C.A.A. requires a conference invitation for reclassification, and U.S.T. secured one from the Summit League, a nine-school, mid-major Division I conference in the Midwest that sponsors most sports U.S.T. plays, except football and hockey.
“Why they didn’t move up sooner to Division II is beyond me,” said Summit League Commissioner Tom Douple. “We felt it was an excellent fit for us.”
In 2011, the N.C.A.A. prohibited teams from jumping directly from Division III to Division I, believing that the differences in structure, rules, staffing and revenue needs required a lengthy adjustment period, N.C.A.A. spokeswoman Meghan Durham said. The biggest difference: Division III bans athletic scholarships.
Neither Durham nor Douple could recall any Division III school moving directly to Division I before the N.C.A.A. explicitly banned it.
But in mid-October, the NCAA Division I Council, spurred in part by the St. Thomas application, agreed to study a potential direct pathway from Division III to Division I. Whether that helps U.S.T.’s argument is unclear. Key rulings on a waiver for U.S.T. could come in January at the next Division I Council meeting, Douple said, though its decisions are more likely to come in April.
“One of the things we knew from the beginning is, it’s a difficult task, a daunting task, but it’s one we feel is worthwhile,” said Douple, who guided four current Summit League members through reclassification from Division II to Division I. “We feel we do have a compelling case, one we can hopefully work through the committees and bring to fruition.”
The Summit League and U.S.T. prefer an answer by April, Douple said, to plan schedules for 2021-22. U.S.T. Athletic Director Phil Esten, who was previously an athletics administrator at Penn State, California, Ohio State and Minnesota, would not predict how the N.C.A.A. might rule.
“It’s an extraordinary situation,” said Esten, a former Tommies baseball player. “The circumstances are as extenuating as I think anybody can imagine.”
Once St. Thomas exhausted efforts last summer to remain in the MIAC, the university’s president, Julie Sullivan, appointed an 18-member task force to determine what to do next. Esten contacted conferences in all three divisions.
“We were primarily looking at Division II and Division III options because we didn’t think there was Division I option,” Sullivan said. “When the Summit League expressed an interest, they seemed like a really good fit for a number of reasons.”
Douple said he had heard “rumblings” last spring about U.S.T.’s possible expulsion from the MIAC, and a mutual friend set up an introduction to school officials. Impressed by the university’s profile, including an alumni base of 110,000 and a $519 million endowment, Douple visited the campus in April while in Minneapolis for the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball Final Four. The school’s Twin Cities location was another plus.
St. Thomas’s undergraduate enrollment is similar to several Catholic universities in the Midwest, including Notre Dame (8,576), Marquette (8,335), Saint Louis (7,411) and Creighton (4,255). All, Sullivan noted, play in Division I.
This is not the first time St. Thomas has considered moving up. In 2005, the university’s trustees hired an outside firm to explore a move to Division I in hockey, but the estimated costs of travel, scholarships and facilities proved prohibitive.
Things have changed since then. U.S.T.’s endowment has almost doubled. A move to the Summit League, Esten said, would not be as costly as joining one of the so-called Power Five conferences. Esten declined to estimate U.S.T.’s budget in Division I, though it is likely to at least triple to account for scholarships, additional staff members and travel.
“The budget increase is not as large as some people might imagine it would be,” Esten said. “I’m coming from a $170 million budget at Penn State. That’s not what Summit League budgets are.”
Those ranged from $11 million to $28 million in 2017-18, according to the USA Today N.C.A.A. Finances database. By comparison, Augustana, a private university in Sioux Falls, S.D., that is moving to Division I from Division II with an eye on the Summit League, expects its athletic budget to rise from $10 million — double that of U.S.T. — to about $16 million once its reclassification is complete, said Josh Morton, its athletic director. The school also hired its first associate athletic director for development to lead fund-raising.
St. Thomas would still need to find leagues for its football and hockey teams. If the waiver is approved, Esten plans to approach the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League — which is in Division I and includes schools known for other sports like Butler, Davidson and Dayton — about associate membership. Jen Flowers, the women’s league commissioner for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, confirmed she and Esten had spoken informally about associate membership.
Sullivan said the university will cover initial Division I costs from a special endowment fund for start-up programs. Then comes fund-raising. St. Thomas needs a bigger hockey arena (the current one seats 1,400), and possibly expanded facilities for football (5,025) and basketball (2,000). Attendance for St. John’s football games is modest, except for Tommie-Johnnie football games. Last season, when the football game was held at St. John’s, U.S.T.’s on-campus attendance averaged 2,673 for football and 701 for men’s basketball.
“Let’s demonstrate we can sell out our basketball arena or our football stadium,” Esten said. “When we get to the point that we’ve got demand for that, then we’ll think about the next step.”
There is one big drawback if U.S.T. ultimately moves to Division I: The end of the Tommie-Johnnie rivalry. It could be salvaged for a few years if the N.C.A.A. makes U.S.T. take the traditional path through Division II; games between Division II and III opponents are not unheard of. But if St. Thomas jumps to Division I, next year’s game at St. John’s could be the last.
“There are many things that are disappointing and sad about this,” said Tommies football Coach Glenn Caruso. “That’s certainly one of them.”
