The future of University of St. Thomas athletics had been in flux over the past couple of years. After being booted from the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) in 2019, St. Thomas had to quickly formulate a plan for its athletic programs.
St. Thomas announced Wednesday that, after over a year of uncertainty, it will be making the rare jump from Division III to Division I athletics beginning in the fall of 2021.
This is the first time in recent NCAA history that a program has been allowed to jump from Division III to Division I while skipping over Division II. Given the school’s location in St. Paul and its rapidly-growing student body, it might not be long before the Tommies are competitive in their new respective conferences.
UST will join the Summit League, which includes North Dakota State and South Dakota State, for every sport except football and hockey. The Tommies will join the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) for women’s hockey. No announcement has been made about the St. Thomas men’s hockey program.
For football, the Tommies will join the Pioneer League, which includes schools from all across the continental United States. Schools in this conference are part of the Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly known as Division I-AA.
It’s a useless debate now, but many still question the decision to kick St. Thomas from the MIAC. After all, St. Thomas was a founding member of the conference over 100 years ago. Of course, the Tommies had reached a level of competition that other MIAC schools simply couldn’t reach in athletics over the past few decades. St. Thomas has won 15 NCAA team titles since 1982 and won seemingly a majority of all MIAC conference titles during that span.
The unique transition from Division III to Division I marks an historic moment in college athletics. However, it’s historic not just because of that unprecedented move. This announcement also unofficially marks the end of the storied athletic rivalry between St. Thomas and St. John’s University.
While the rivalry has quickly grown to sports besides football, the gridiron is where the Johnnie-Tommie rivalry became legendary. Year after year, Division III attendance records were broken at the site of the St. Thomas vs. St. John’s matchup. In fact, the demand to watch this rivalry grew so fast that bigger venues were needed.
The battle for the Holy Grail was played at Target Field, the home of the Minnesota Twins, in 2017, as over 37,355 filled the stands. That mark is currently No. 2 in NCAA Division III history only behind a 2019 matchup that was played between Cortland and Ithaca at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, home to the New York Giants and New York Jets.
Six of the 10 most attended Division III football games of all-time are matchups between the Johnnies and the Tommies. On the day of the 2016 matchup between UST and SJU, the campus of St. John’s in Collegeville, MN hosted ESPN’s SportsCenter on the Road, a college football preview show that was aired just prior to the highly popular College Gameday.
It’s one of the most unique rivalries in all of college sports. Two schools with similar names and wildly different campuses, separated by about a 90-minute drive, clashing with each other for over 100 years for bragging rights. Overall, SJU holds a 53-35-1 record over the Tommies on the gridiron.
The rivalry is currently set to go out in epic fashion on Nov. 9, 2020 with one final matchup at U.S. Bank Stadium. Many expect this game to shatter the current Division III attendance record of 45,161 fans. However, with COVID-19 still lingering, it looks as if not only with the attendance record not be broken, but the game may not even be played.
Johnnie-Tommie is a staple in all Division III athletics. The MIAC conference has built a strong reputation for both academic and athletic success over the past 100 years largely thanks to the success of St. Thomas and St. John’s.
Now, St. Thomas makes the jump to Division I where everything is different. The football team will quite literally be traveling all over the country in the Pioneer League. For sports other than football, the Summit League presents an opportunity for the Tommies to compete right away with some of the best mid-major Division I programs in the Midwest. It will be a dramatic change for Tommie student-athletes and coaches.
Those that experienced the Johnnie-Tommie rivalry won’t forget it. The competition was second-to-none in seemingly every matchup, always living up to the hype. The fandom has become even more passionate, as students and alum of these two unique schools get a taste of what a Division I rivalry week is like. All students, coaches, and players have looked forward to that date every year for the past 100 years.
Is UST’s transition to Division I the best thing for all parties involved? Perhaps. But it’s still a shame that one of the great rivalries in all of college sports is coming to a close.
