School deemed too dominant jumps to D-I
The NCAA gave the University of St. Thomas permission Wednesday to jump directly from Division III to Division I, the final clearance for a bold move born out of the Minnesota private school’s ejection from its conference for winning too much.
The Tommies, who had secured a spot in the Summit League for all but three of their 22 varsity teams pending NCAA approval, announced they’ll join the Pioneer League for football and the Western Collegiate Hockey Association for women’s hockey. The men’s hockey program is still in the process of finding a conference.
“We are looking more like our national Catholic peers in being a comprehensive university that competes at a level that broadens our platform,” St. Thomas President Julie Sullivan said. “So I think it’s really quite consistent with the trajectory of the university.”
When a majority of school presidents in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference decided 14 months ago they wanted the Tommies out, St. Thomas leaders were first focused on Division III alternatives and the potential of moving to Division II. Summit League Commissioner Tom Douple, eager to add the Twin Cities market, targeted St. Thomas for the conference and played a vital role in encouraging the NCAA to allow it. Big Ten member Minnesota is the state’s only other full-fledged Division I program.
The NCAA’S Division I council ruled in June that St. Thomas could make a formal request to waive reclassification rules for Division III schools seeking Division I membership that currently mandate a 12-year process with a stop in Division II. The council planned to vote by April on a proposal to reduce the reclassification process to five years, but the waiver was granted for St. Thomas in this unique, urgent scenario.
St. Thomas is the first school to make the two-level jump since the current rules were put in place in 2010. Buffalo made the two-level jump in 1993. Dayton did the same that year, but the Flyers were already in Division I in basketball.
The 2020-21 school year will be the final season for the Tommies in the 100-year-old MIAC they helped found. The Catholic institution of about 6,000 undergraduate students located in the state’s capital, St. Paul, is more than double the size of the other schools in the MIAC and has long produced the most powerful programs in that league in many sports. The Tommies have won the all-sports trophy in the MIAC for 13 consecutive school years on both the men’s and women’s side, and they have won 15 national titles in NCAA team sports since 1982.
Like any school that transitions up, St. Thomas will have provisional Division I status for four years until first being eligible for postseason competition in the 2025-26 seasons.