As you may know, the University of St. Thomas received permission from the NCAA to jump classifications for its sports from Division III to Division I. That unprecedent move was spurred on (possibly in part, probably in total) by the similarly unprecedented move by the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletics Conference (MIAC) to kick out the Tommies out of the conference. The other 13 schools expelled St. Thomas because its teams, especially the football team, was beating the shit out of them on a regular basis. I would have said that the other schools just need to play better, or get more money in order to fund the infrastructure in order to get better. They decided to expel instead. And according to this article, it was not UST's idea to make the jump, but the Commission of The Summit League.
Anyway, this fall -- and actually this week, starting, as usual, with women's soccer -- St. Thomas starts its athletic life as a top-flight school. Not counting men's and women's hockey (and in The State Of Hockey, you never should), UST is now the second Division I university in Minnesota, joining, well, the U. Till now, Minnesota was one of only five states to have one and only one top-flight college.
The others, by the way: Hawai'i, Maine, Vermont and Wyoming. (Though Alaska-Fairbanks still has a men's hockey team, since it is hockey, I'm guessing it doesn't count, so Alaska actually has no Division I schools.) Now put up Minnesota against those four (and maybe even five) other states. "One of these things is not like the others" on steroids, am I right? Minnesota has a huge urban center and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the United States. A population magnet like that has to have a second Division-I school, right?
Wrong. Well, at least until now. St. Thomas is a shoefly in terms of enrollment, but in all other factors (endowment, alumni base, athletics success), they have enough things going for them to say that they deserve to be Division I. That commish of the Summit thinks so, too.
But in elevating to top-flight I am sincerely and acutely ... heartbroken. I will be perfectly frank: I am very sad and kind of lost now that The Gopher State will now have a second Division I university. It's not as if I have been bereft of, well, "choices" when it comes to rooting for college teams. All my life it's been the University of Minnesota. I was aware that the state is "weird" when it comes to hockey, but if you wanted big-time football and basketball, Heisman winners and March Madness champions and draft picks you'll see play in the NFL and NBA, you would see them because they would be playing the Golden Gophers. There was no other option. And that was OK, because ... well, because it's always been that way, we've been conditioned to look through college athletics though a maroon-and-gold lens, and not having a second university to root for wasn't a hole in my sports heart. Other states have a multitude of colleges to root for, but Minnesota worked just fine with only one such school.
The day when we would have a second probably was an inevitability. A state this big, this populated and this urbane would have to have another college in top-flight athletics. It does help with variety, however, and St. Thomas serves as a unique contrast (if not antagonist) to the U. because they are the opposite of the U. in a lot of ways: private instead of public; religious (St. Thomas is a Catholic school) vs. secular; mid-major vs. BcS; new vs. old. And yet I am kind of sad the first time a team for the Tommies has a better in-season record that the counterpart at Dinkytown. Even though I had no other choice, the U. was my college team. But I was neither bereft nor lacking. So, honestly, I see the Tommies as an interloper, an upstart, maybe even an impostor. And I'm afraid the comparisons the U. will now have to face, especially when they have an underachieving team, will now be a regular part of their public relations.
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When I began the WMNSS, my main goal was to rank all the teams originating in the Twin Cities that play at the highest level of competition for their sport. There are still legitimate questions as to how faithfully I hew to that standard. For example, would I really rank the Gopher basketball team when there's the Timberwolves? Jokes about how butt the Wolves have been most of their existence aside, fair point. I rationalize it away by thinking that college basketball is so popular in its own right that it is its own "sport." That allows me to believe that the Twin Cities-based college basketball team deserves to be on the survey as much as the Twin Cities-based professional basketball team does.
But two college basketball teams? I can't hand-wave that away. No, St. Thomas isn't entering the Big Ten; most of its teams will be part of The Summit. (Exceptions: Football is in the Pioneer League, men's hockey in the CCHA, and women's hockey in the WCHA alongside the U. and the four other top-flight hockey programs in Minnesota.) But most of the programs are Division I, aka top-flight. And I am not going to write about both, say, Minnesota and St. Thomas men's hockey teams every Week. The survey is already long many Months of the Year and I have other things I need to do.
Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that if St. Thomas has a program that Minnesota has, I will not write about either team. Yes, this is a radical step. But it is too much for me to follow, oh, a dozen new programs throughout the college calendar, even if it means that entire sports will not be followed from now on. I just don't know how else to decide without devoting more Hours to this than I already do.
There are exceptions, sports where I still identify only one team playing at the highest level of competition for its sport:
- As of right now, Minnesota has a wrestling team and St. Thomas doesn't. So, there is only one Twin Cities-based top-flight college wrestling program. Gopher wrestling stays on the survey.
- I didn't realize that it goes the other way, too. The Tommies have a men's soccer team and the Gophers don't. So, there is only one Twin Cities-based top-flight men's soccer program. Welcome, Tommies men's soccer, to The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey! Well, not yet; see below.
- Yes, technically St. Thomas football is in Division I. But the NCAA (actually its member schools) long ago made classifications within Div. I. Division 1-A, now designated as FBS, consists of the biggest schools doling out the most scholarships. Division 1-AA, now designated as FCS, consists of the schools that give out, I believe, 22 fewer scholarships. Also, way fewer people care about them. There are enough distinctions between FBS and FCS to make me think that they're not on the same level. Simply put, the U. has clear advantages over St. Thomas, no matter how dominant the Tommies were over MIAC competition. So I will continue to follow Gopher football and disregard Tommie football. Think of it as following the Twins but not the St. Paul Saints; not a great analogy because St. Thomas players don't get "called up" to the U., but I think you know what I mean.
At least for now. Despite the unprecedented jump, St. Thomas programs still have to undergo a four-Year provisional period, meaning no Tommies team can play in the postseason until the 2025-6 school season. There is no tangible connection from that rule to the survey, but I will keep surveying Gopher and only Gopher teams from the college ranks until then. That gives me time to think if I even want to go through with the decisions I laid out above. I may stick to it. I may decide to not follow St. Thomas teams at all and keep going with the WMNSS as it always has been. I may decide to go through with these eliminations starting this Year. Who knows?
All I can tell you is that when I make my decision, I'll let you know. This is just really strange, man, and I'm still figuring out how I feel about all this.
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