The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) is showing one of its most successful founding members the door.Most people have been concentrating on the exploits of the Tommies on the gridiron, where they've been less than gentle in their treatment of their foes, as SI notes:
The 13-school Division III league has decided to kick out the University of St. Thomas, one of its founding members, due to concerns about “athletic competitive parity.”
In short, St. Thomas is just too good at sports for the rest of the MIAC, and if the Tommies had stayed, the teams they had been pummeling were considering leaving, threatening the future of the conference.
St. Thomas has an enrollment about twice the size of the next largest school in the MIAC and is one of just two league members with at least 100 players on the football team, according to Pat Borzi of MinnPost. Add in the fact that in 2017 the Tommies’ conference results included an 84–0 rout of Hamline and a 97–0 thrashing of St. Olaf, and it starts to make sense why other schools wanted them gone.I couldn't find footage of the St. Olaf game, but it was something like this:
So football is a source of contention, but the larger issue is the overall level of dominance:
St. Thomas only started dominating football after current coach Glenn Caruso arrived in 2008, but the school has begun to dominate most other sports, too. Since the 2013–14 school year, St. Thomas has 72 MIAC titles across all sports; the next closest league member has 16.We've seen this before -- my beloved alma mater, Beloit College, got the boot from the Midwest Conference in 1951. Tom Oates from the Wisconsin State Journal tells the story:
Starting with the 1945-46 season, [Coach Dolph] Stanley built a program that would compile a 242-58 record in 12 years, finish as high as third in what became the NAIA tournament and become so dominant it was expelled from the Midwest Conference following its sixth consecutive title in 1951.About that last Midwest Conference game -- Beloit edged Cornell (Iowa) 131-43 in the title game. Beloit then went on to NIT, which was then a prestigious tournament, losing to Seton Hall. In his day, Stanley was merciless:
There were no divisions in NCAA basketball at the time, but Stanley's teams beat many schools that are now household name4s in Division I, including DePaul and Loyola from Chicago, Indiana State (coached by John Wooden), Houston, Brigham Young, Washington State, Arizona and Florida State.
"He tried to schedule as many (big-time) teams as he could," said Johnny Orr, who also graduated from Beloit in 1949, coached at Michigan and Iowa State and now lives near Naples, Fla. "We travelled everywhere, man. We'd play anybody and we'd beat most of 'em."
Stanley, who died in 1990, used his pressing, fastbreaking style to fill Beloit's new field house and confuse opponents.The Bucs of that era featured Erickson, who coached the Badgers in the 1960s, along with Johnny Orr, who coached at Michigan and Iowa State for many years, and Ron Bontemps, the star player on the 1952 U.S. Olympic team. It wasn't sustainable; Stanley eventually left and went on to Drake and the Bucs eventually were welcomed back into the Midwest Conference, where these days they are often a footwipe.
"I remember once we were really killing the other team and there was a timeout and the coach came up the floor and he had tears in his eyes," said [former UW-Madison coach John] Erickson, who lives near Kansas City. "He said to Dolph, ‘You've got to let us get the ball to halfcourt. I've never seen this before. I don't know what you call it, but we can't get the ball up to midcourt.' And Dolph said, ‘Well, you're going to have to learn to do that I guess.' "
The Tommies don't have superstars, but they often get guys like Jacques Parra, who was a Division 1 player who transferred to St. Thomas and was the quarterback who led the gentle 97-0 win over the unfortunate Oles.
I'm torn about this. The Tommies are dominant in just about every sport in the MIAC, which makes it tough for the other schools to take. It’s not just about football. I understand the argument, but it’s common in all competitive activities for the dominant program to move up a level in competition. Have the Tommies have reached that point? I think so.
3 comments:
At 6000 students, it's probably time for them to go D2. Would be interesting to see a comparison of AD budgets between them and their peers, and then again between them and new peers in D2. With visits to a few of the D3 schools in St. Paul (Hamline hosts the state track meet for high school every year) and with two daughters at Winona State (in D2), I'm not persuaded that the difference in funding/etc., is that big. To D1, yes, but to D2, nah.
I looked at things again, and their football schedule shows something very interesting; blowouts vs. Trinity Int'l, Hamline, UW-Eau Claire, Concordia-Moorhead, Augsburg, St. Olaf, and Carleton, a tight game vs. Gustavus, and two losses vs. St. John's and Bethel. 2017 wasn't as striking, but it was similar.
That says something very different; that some schools are trying to put a team on the field, and others hardly care. I'd have to suggest the MIAC needs to find another conference with similar patterns and maybe let the weak schools form a "club sport" conference, while the stronger schools form a "near D2 conference." If they don't, you're just going to get farcical scores and get kids hurt.
A final thought from the football schedule is that the Tommies are often losing to Bethel and St. John's, but the point spreads by the Tommies when they win big are bigger. In other words, the bottom half of the league sees them as running up the score. I can't find anything saying "they kept their 1st/2nd string in when they were up by 30" or anything, but I have to wonder if that's part of the calculus.
Post a Comment