The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference will not kick out the University of St. Thomas for being too successful, despite a push to do exactly that.
A push that first came to public light earlier this month would have seen the 13-member Division III league kick out the Tommies, but a meeting of league presidents on Thursday produced no action one way or the other. A vote was not expected until May. The MIAC statement:
The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) Presidents' Council met on Thursday, April 18 for a discussion on philosophy, competition, and membership. The presidents of all 13 MIAC institutions attended and agreed to continue discussions at future meetings. No action was taken and no further details will be provided at this time.
Of course, the MIAC couldn't just kick out St. Thomas for winning too much. Instead, the anti-Tommie faction would dog-whistle St. Thomas out of the league by placing an enrollment cap at 4,000 undergraduates. St. Thomas has over 6,200 undergrads and is the only MIAC member over 4,000.
“We support the MIAC, we want to be in the MIAC and we want to be in Division III,” Tommie SID Gene McGivern told Tommie Media. “We’re doing everything we can to help stabilize membership.”
St. Thomas is the most successful MIAC member. The Tommie football program is 118-19 in 11 seasons under head coach Glenn Caruso, going 78-10 in MIAC games with six conference championships. Perhaps more relevant than the number of games St. Thomas has won is the way they've won some of them; over the past two seasons, the Tommies have won league games by scores of 97-0, 84-0, 68-0 (twice) and 60-0.
For what it's worth, St. Thomas dropped two MIAC games in 2018 and did not win the conference championship.
St. Thomas's Olympic sports routinely dominate the MIAC as well; the Tommies outpaced the next-closest MIAC school by more than 250 points in the 2017-18 Learfield Directors' Cup, and they've swept the men's and women's all-sports MIAC title in each of the past 11 years.
St. Thomas is an original member of the MIAC, founding the league with four other Minnesota schools in 1920.