UMHB Kicked Out of ASC & TLU Removed from SCAC

Not really but both schools should be happy they are not in the MIAC. That conference recently announced “…the University of St. Thomas will be involuntarily removed from membership in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC).” The Tommies will remain in the conference through the spring 2021 season and you can find the full MIAC statement here.

Ricky has a post up on this, too, with some good comments on it.

There are a number of articles on the topic and most center around the Tommies being too good at football but I’m sure there are two sides here. On the surface, however, the optics are not very good for the MIAC. It’s even funnier to hear “too good at football” being a reason to be kicked out of a conference when you live in Texas.

Now above all I’m a top-flight journalist so when I heard about this story I immediately feared for the future of UMHB. You see, the Tommies didn’t win the NCAA DIII National Championship in football this past season; the Cru did. (Side note, the too good for football Tommies didn’t make the tournament.) Since UMHB won the national championship I figured the ASC were getting ready to “involuntarily remove” them from the conference. I reached out to the ASC about this prospect and they replied cryptically “Of course not”. Read into this statement as you will.

Recently the Bulldogs from TLU won the National Championship in softball so I felt I needed to reach out to the SCAC about their plans to remove that school from the conference. They replied, “Ha! Absolutely not!” but I have no way of knowing if their fingers were crossed when they replied.

In all seriousness, no word yet on what St. Thomas will do with respect to athletics. Based on their responses in defense of their champions, I’m sure either the ASC or SCAC would love to have them. I would also be reasonably sure that the Tommies would be guaranteed a couple of ice hockey conference championships each year.