Tommies

The Tommies open this stretch of their history in Division I FCS, the level St. Thomas reached in 2025 after leaving Division III outright — the first program ever to skip Division II on the way up. That jump followed a Pioneer Football League title in 2022, their first season at the D1 level.

Glenn Caruso has coached the program since 2008, and the climb through the divisions happened on his watch, along with national coach of the year recognition along the way. Under him St. Thomas reached the NCAA Division III championship game twice, in 2012 and 2015.

That standing was built inside the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, where St. Thomas won the league 21 times, a run stretching from 1922 to 2019. For most of that era the season turned on one fixture: the Tommie-Johnnie game against St. John's University, played for a trophy called the Holy Grail.

Games are played at O'Shaughnessy Stadium, capacity 5,025, in purple and gray. The program traces back to the late 1890s, with the first official varsity games in 1904, at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul.