St. Thomas is being kicked out of the conference in which they were founding members, for being too good and to create a more "equitable" playing field for the other teams. So instead of finding another DIII conference to join, what do they do? They apply for a waiver to jump to DI and potentially join the Summit League in 2021:   https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/27/sports/ncaafootball/st-thomas-division-i.html