Hayden Audette, auggie superfan

The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) announced this week that Augsburg University will be removed from the conference due to concerns about several of the teams having an unfair advantage. This decision comes just three years after the conference voted to remove the University of St. Thomas for the exact same reason. This move by the MIAC will certainly come as a shock to many, but it is not too difficult to see why it was made after the incredibly successful year that Augsburg athletics had. 

Just during the winter 2022 seasons alone, Augsburg won regular-season conference championships in both mens hockey and womens basketball. The mens hockey program was also able to make a historic run all the way to the Division III National Semifinals. In the fall, the football program registered its best record in several years. Also, Mens and Womens soccer and volleyball all qualified for the MIAC playoffs. The conference’s other members were very upset with one school having so much success, and made the decision to remove Augsburg. “We can’t just have one school winning everything and showing everyone else up,” an anonymous athletic director said in an interview. “It just isn’t very Minnesotan at all.”

It has not been decided where Augsburg will go next after this removal but the most likely move seems to be following St. Thomas’ lead, making a jump all the way up to Division I. One possibility is joining the Tommies in the Summit League since that conference already accepted one school that was forced out of the MIAC and would likely be willing to add one more. Another potential move is joining the Big Ten. While it might seem far-fetched for a Division III school to make the jump to a Power 5 conference, the Big Ten has been willing to add on quite a bit in recent years. Not only that, but a conference that calls itself “the Big Ten” having 14 member schools is confusing enough on its own. It is very possible that they would be willing to add a 15th member and confuse college sports fans even more. 

There are currently no plans for the MIAC to remove any other schools from the conference. However, other dominant schools may be candidates for removal in the future. One possibility is St. John’s University, which won the conference championship in both football and mens basketball this year. In response to a question about their current status, an anonymous representative for the MIAC told the Echo that the Johnnies were still safe for now. “They are on very thin ice,” The representative admits. “If this keeps up for a few more years, we might have to think about getting rid of them too.”

This article was published as part of The Echo’s 2022 joke issue.