With St. Thomas' dismissal from MIAC, it's more than just football

A persistent question from those with both a vested and casual interest in the ongoing story of the MIAC booting St. Thomas out of the conference is this: If the conference is going to oust one athletic powerhouse, why stop there?

After all, St. John's has a much richer legacy in football — the college sport with the greatest visibility and most prestige. It wasn't that long ago that the Johnnies dominated the rivalry with the Tommies, winning 12 in a row from 1998-2009. St. John's is also the only MIAC school to win a Division III national title in football — doing it in both 1976 and 2003.

And the MIAC opened itself up to this question by citing "athletic competitive parity in the conference as a primary concern" for kicking the Tommies out of the conference — not enrollment size or some other factor.

It's a good question, and one that becomes even more interesting with the knowledge that St. John's reportedly would have voted against kicking St. Thomas out. Here are some attempts at answering it:

1) In looking at the past six years of MIAC football history, when both St. Thomas and St. John's were very competitive, some interesting things come to light.

I looked specifically at how both programs fared in those six seasons between 2013 and '18 against Augsburg, Hamline, Carleton and St. Olaf — four schools that often finish at or near the bottom of the conference standings, all of whom were reportedly prepared to vote St. Thomas out of the conference if it came to that.

Both St. Thomas and St. John's were a perfect 24-0 against those schools, sweeping them in each of the past six years. But the final margins were considerably different.

Both are lopsided results, but the opportunity for hard feelings might be accentuated as scores climb higher and higher.

Maybe St. Thomas was just a better team during those six years … though in the six regular-season meetings between St. John's and St. Thomas during that span, each team won three times — with St. Thomas winning by a narrow 140-136 combined margin.

2) Perhaps this really is about more than just football. In terms of overall athletic dominance in the MIAC, St. Thomas dwarfs every other school, including St. John's.

St. Thomas has won the past 12 all-sports MIAC competitions — a distinction given to the program that "accumulates the best all-sports record during the MIAC academic year" — on both the men's and women's sides.

The Tommies have won 56 conference titles since 2010 spanning nine men's and women's sports — football, men's and women's track, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's basketball and men's and women's hockey. That's more than the rest of the schools in the conference combined to win in those nine sports in that span.

As of 2017, Carleton had by far the largest endowment — money accrued and maintained from donations — of any MIAC school at $837 million, per the Business Journal. Macalester, which competes in the MIAC in all sports except football, was second at $719 million. St. Thomas and St. Olaf have nearly identical endowments of just under $500 million. From there, it drops considerably to St. John's ($180 million). Several others, including Hamline and Augsburg, are below $100 million.