Ninety-nine years after helping found the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, St. Thomas has been kicked out. It was the only way to save the conference, commissioner Dan McKane said.

“The MIAC would have collapsed in a year if this action didn’t occur,” McKane said Wednesday.

The MIAC announced the move Wednesday morning on its web site after weeks of speculation that the Tommies, the biggest school in the NCAA Division III conference, were on the way out.

Spurred by lopsided football losses, a number of MIAC schools began discussing the possibility of booting St. Thomas, but football wasn’t the only issue. Many believed the Tommies had simply outgrown the conference they helped start in 1920.

“The outcome,” St. Thomas vice president and athletics director Phil Esten said, “is sad and disappointing.”

With an undergraduate enrollment of 6,300, St. Thomas has grown to twice the size of the MIAC’s next-largest undergraduate populations, 2,900 each at St. Olaf and Bethel. Schools began debating the idea of changing the MIAC’s enrollment limit, something that would require nine of the conference’s 13 schools to endorse.

In the end, that wasn’t necessary, McKane said.

“There was no vote,” he said. “The membership, the presidents, discussed this over the past several months and agreed this is the best way to keep the conference intact, with a two-year transition for St. Thomas,” he said.

The Tommies can compete in the MIAC through spring 2021, but can leave earlier if they find a conference or decide to become an independent. Esten said “all options are on the table” for the Tommies. That includes staying Division III or moving up to Division II.

Although there was no vote, St. Thomas did not leave voluntarily. In a letter sent to alumni electronically Wednesday, St. Thomas president Julie H. Sullivan called it “a difficult day for our community.”

“The primary concern cited by the other MIAC presidents,” she wrote, “is the lack of competitive parity within the conference, across many sports.”

In the past five years, St. Thomas has won more than 50 percent of all MIAC championships.

“There was strong consensus across all presidents that the MIAC would cease to exist as it is; that the only way it would survive intact was without St. Thomas,” Esten said.

Sullivan and Esten had been meeting with other MIAC presidents and athletics directors over the past several months in an effort to show that St. Thomas belonged in the conference. “We tried to understand their core concerns and tried to stabilize the conference,” he said. “That was our priority.”

The Pioneer Press contacted several MIAC schools seeking comment. Those that replied — Bethel, Carleton and Hamline — declined to make their presidents available or comment further on Wednesday’s announcement.

“The information given out by the MIAC is what’s going to be given out,” a Carleton spokesperson said.

St. Thomas has won 15 national titles since the MIAC became affiliated with NCAA Division III in 1973, more than any other conference school. In the past 10 years, St. Thomas has been the MIAC’s champion or co-champion in the eight biggest sports 57 times; the runner-up is Gustavus Adolphus with 15.

But football appeared to be the catalyst. In 2016, St. Thomas, led by coach Glenn Caruso, beat conference rivals Carleton, Hamline and St. Olaf by a combined score of 244-0. In 2017, that gap was closed to 190-0, including a 97-0 victory over St. Olaf in the regular-season finale.

Esten declined to single out football as the focus of the other 12 MIAC schools’ wrath.

“There was not one sport, one game or one team — or one anything — that led to this,” he said. “Everything I’ve heard focuses on a comprehensive common parity across the board.”

‘COMPETITIVE PARITY’

The Pioneer Press looked at the total number of championships or co-championships in eight of the MIAC’s biggest sports over the past 10 seasons (baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, football, men’s and women’s hockey, softball and volleyball). Here are the number of titles won by each MIAC school:

St. Thomas 57

57 Gustavus Adolphus 15

15 Bethel 6

6 St. John’s 6

6 Augsburg 5

5 Concordia (Moorhead) 2

2 St. Benedict 2

2 Carleton 1

1 Hamline 1

1 Macalester 1

1 St. Mary’s 1

1 St. Olaf 1

1 St. Catherine: 1

This story has been edited: St. Catherine won the MIAC softball championship in 2017.