Augustana athletic director Josh Morton and Summit League commissioner Tom Douple finally, for the first time, confirmed it publicly Thursday on KWSN:

The Div. II school in Sioux Falls has applied for membership to join former rivals South Dakota and South Dakota State in the Div. I mid-major conference, which is now stationed and centered in Sioux Falls.

Their confirmations in seperate interviews with KWSN’s “Sports Talk with Craig & John” comes over 14 months after the school quietly issued a press release on Dec. 13, 2018, announcing its intention to compete in Div. I athletics, and two days before the league’s highest-profile event, the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in the Denny Sanford Premier Center, which starts on Saturday.

Prior to Thursday, officials from neither the school nor the league had publicly reported any official steps Augustana had taken to join the conference.

Next step: Summit League presidents, who ultimately decide on membership, will all be in Sioux Falls take a site visit of the Augustana campus in early May and might then vote on whether or not to extend an invitation.

“It’s best that we come to a decision,” Douple said. “It’s healthy for us, it’s healthy for them.”

But Morton and Douple each sent a firm message Thursday on KWSN:

Augie’s joining the league, or even being invited into it, is “far from a done deal,” and convincing enough conference presidents to vote to invite the Vikings is going to be “definitely an uphill battle.”

To hear the full interview with Douple click here… To hear the full interview with Morton, click here.

Douple said he told Augustana president Stephanie Herseth Sandlin — who he called “an outstanding president” — that she is going to have to “change some narrative and change some minds.”

“One (Summit) president told me, (Augustana is) a small school in a small state with a small alumni base and a small endowment,” Douple said to KWSN.

“Somehow, (Herseth Sandlin) and the university has got to be able to change that narrative into some positive thinking, got to create some other area where there is added value. Presidents, they obviously look at things a lot different from most folks, but that’s why they’re in those great positions. But, those are the challenges that need to be addressed. Maybe they can, maybe they can’t. But (Herseth Sandlin) is aware of that.”

Augustana’s enrollment is about 2,100, which is just larger than half the size of Oral Roberts, which currently has by far the lowest enrollment of the nine schools in the Summit League at 4,000. All but two of the schools top the 9,900 mark. Augie’s endowment is $90 million, according to Morton, which would place seventh out of 10 teams, ahead of ORU (38M) and Western Illinois (60M), and Omaha (72M).

The presidents of the four schools in the Dakotas (USD, SDSU, UND, NDSU), plus Omaha, who are former NCC rivals of Augie in Div. II are well aware of the details of Augustana and its athletic program, University of South Dakota athletics director David Herbster told KWSN Thursday.

The schools outside that realm — Oral Roberts, Denver, Western Illinois, Missouri-Kansas City — are the ones whose presidents appear to need more education and convincing. (Purdue-Fort Wayne is leaving the league after the school year, while UMKC is replacing it as the ninth school).

“I wish I could tell you I have a good feeling one way or the other, but right now we don’t,” Herbster said of Augustana’s chances of getting enough votes for an invitation. “A little bit of it is, right now we’re in that waiting game to see what happens to St. Thomas.”

The private school in St. Paul, MN., was voted out of its Div. III league of decades-long Minnesota rivals last May. Over a month before that happened, Douple and other league officials toured the St. Thomas campus in early April, and by Oct. 3, the Summit presidents council had voted to extend St. Thomas an invitation, allowing that first step in the transition to Div. I.

However, that deal is not done because the NCAA is mulling its decision to allow St. Thomas to leap from Div. III to Div. I, a move that the NCAA has never allowed. The decision will come in April, and it may dictate Augustana’s chances of that May invitiation.

A St. Thomas inclusion would give the Summit League 10 teams, an even number preferred for easier and more fair scheduling. Herbster on KWSN Thursday acknowledged the difficulties of the conference structuring league basketball slates with an odd number of teams.

Those schedules get quirky, with every team getting a “bye week” once during the league slate, and the byes may come at more advantageous times than others, like when both South Dakota State men’s and women’s team had last Saturday off, making the Jackrabbits the only teams in the conference able to rest the weekend before the league tournament starts. To be fair, SDSU was the only team to not get a break between league games.

“Ideally, you want 10 teams that are like-minded, that look alike, that are geographically in close proximity,” Herbster said, something both St. Thomas and Augustana would provide.

If St. Thomas is forced into Div. II and can’t join the Summit League, Augustana’s invitation chances might increase by virtue of essentially replacing St. Thomas as the 10th team.

If allowed to move to Div. I immediately, St. Thomas will start competing in the Summit League in the fall of 2021, Douple told KWSN.

That is also when Augustana hopes to start competing in Div. I, if only the Summit League presidents will be convinced it is worthy.

Why did Douple and the Summit League rush to invite St. Thomas within five months the of school’s declaration of intention to move to Div. I, while an invitation to Augustana would, at best, have taken a full year longer? Why did Douple and other league officials visit STU before the school knew its fate in its Div. III conference, while those same officials have yet to tour Augustana — including Douple, who said he has yet to see the campus despite living in Sioux Falls and working out of the league’s new offices here for 19 months?

Chances are, it has to do with St. Thomas’s enrollment (9,878) and endowment ($519 million) being both more than five times that of Augustana. In fact, STU’s endowment would place second in the Summit League behind Denver ($786M). The next biggest endowment in the conference is North Dakota’s at $284 million. Again, Augie’s is $90 million.

Morton on KWSN Thursday appeared ready to address these issues head-on, which is likely a reason Herseth-Sandlin hired him two years ago after he had been an ace fund raiser at Michigan State and before that part of the athletic department at North Dakota which helped transition that school from Div. II to Div. I in the late 2000’s.

A major boost to convincing Summit presidents the Vikings are worthy, Morton said, is the fact that they have won four Div. II national championships in the last 10 years, and that “I don’t think anybody has won as many Div. II national titles in different sports” of teams that have made the D2 to D1 transition as Augustana has in the last 30 years.

And a great equalizer to being a small school, Morton said, is its residence in a big city, or whatever you consider a city of over 188,000, more than double its population 30 years ago.

“Our location is a gift,” Morton said. “To be in the epicenter of the state, and what the projections are for Sioux Falls over the next 20 or 30 years, that’s huge. To be the premier institution in this city, at this time, that’s why we’re able to think big.”

Morton also said Augie’s $90 million endowment for 2,100 means its impact percentage-wise on each student is heavy, and that the goal for the school’s enrollment for 2030 is 3,000, a nearly 27 percent increase in 10 years, made possible by the school’s new MBA and physical therapy programs on the horizon.

Speaking of endowments, Douple sternly told KWSN it is “hogwash,” any assertion that the $250,000 endowments given by Sanford Health to each Summit League school over the next five years will influence the schools’ leaders to vote to invite Augustana in.

Sanford Health is the title sponsor of the Summit Leauge basketball tournaments, a major donor to Augustana athletics, and the owner of the league’s new offices, on the Sanford Sports Complex. Sanford also owns Augustana’s new arena for men’s and women’s basketball, the Sanford Pentagon.

Sanford Health CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft, according to an Argus Leader article, once joked that he dispatched a lieutenant with a suitcase full of cash to lure the league’s basketball tournament to Sioux Falls in 2009, the year SDSU became eligible.

Indeed, the league not only moved the tourney starting that year, but the event has become a smash, consistently one of the top two attended women’s tournaments out of all 33 Div. I leagues. The Jackrabbit women winning 9 of the 11 tourneys held in Sioux Falls — not to mention the SDSU men’s five titles in the last seven events — have helped attendance, ticket sales, and league income.

The Sanford-led sponsorship package to host the tournament included a league guarantee of about $150,000, a figure that has grown since then.

Douple said Krabbenhoft — who has a son who is an Augustana graduate and has been seen both on the Augie football sidelines and heard on the Vikings’ men’s basketball radio broadcasts — a “close personal friend.”

“Just because they are a sponsor of the tournament or that I am friends with a particular individual… This goes beyond that. You can’t (question) the integrity of some presidents who, you know, are going to make decisions based on what’s best for their university.

“There’s no tie-in between Sanford and The Summit League where it says, ‘oh, we’ve got to take this particular institution or that institution. It just doesn’t happen like that.”

Morton said there nothing for Augustana to apologize regarding its relationship with Sanford.

“They’ve been a strategic partner of Augustana for decades, going back to the Sioux Valley hospital days,” Morton said.

“It’s deeper than athletics. It goes to our nursing program, our genetics program. There’s a lot more things involved, (like) our relationship with the (Sanford) Sports Science Insititute.

“And no, Kelby has been incredibly supportive, but not pushy.”

Douple said Missouri-Kansas City, a former league member who left for the Western Athletic Conference in 2013 but returns to the Summit next fall, has no tie-in with Sanford, yet was invited to join.

Same thing goes for St. Thomas, who Douple said would start competing in the Summit League in the fall of 2021 if its bypassing of a Div. II transition is approved in April.

The fall of 2021 is the currently target date for Augustana to be competing in Div. I, but the Vikings, of course, need a conference invitation first. And the “reclassification process” is a four-year transition after the Vikings accept the invitation. At least one more year in Div. II and the Northern Sun Conference is in store, and the 14 months of laboring its Div. I move have already seemed “like a decade,” Morton said.

“My dad told me nothing worth accomplishing was ever easy,” Morton said.

Former North Dakota State football coach Don Morton guided the Bison to the 1983 Div. II national championship and posted a 45-7 record from 1981-84, long before NDSU made the Div. I leap in 2003 and has claimed eight of the last nine FCS national titles.

“I know others have speculated that back when we made the announcement (of the school’s intention to move to Div. I athletics) in December of 2018 that its a done deal. But, no we have work to do to show who we are and the excellence of Augustana, so we’re prepared to do that.”

Oh, and what about football, and wrestling, the two sports out of 19 at Augustana in which the Summit League does not compete?

Morton wouldn’t specify Thursday which conferences those teams would intend to participate, but did clarify that both sports will also be competing in Div. I, including football, which could apply for the Missouri Valley Football Conference — where the Dakota schools reside — or the Pioneer League, comprised of teams who do not issue football scholarships, which would save a lot of money.

Oh, yeah. Money.

To anyone concerned the school won’t be equipped with enough of that to thrive, let alone survive, in Div. I, Morton said:

“We feel really good about that… We’re in the middle of a new campaign, a strategic plan. This is about this whole university. Athletics is a piece of it, and it is going to get the most attention. But it’s about the whole piece of it, in different ways. So, part our plan involves philanthropic giving, and non-philanthropic giving. So, our corporate partnerships — luckily we’ve been set up to have a really good foundation of corporate sponsorship sales, and we need to continue to grow those.

“So, yes, we do feel the money will be there. The excitement that we’ve seen over in the last 13 months has been just terrific.”