Outsourcing in Intercollegiate Athletics Essay -- Sports, Athletes, FB

Division I intercollegiate athletic departments, specially those that ar home to Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams, increasingly gibe front offices of professional brag schemes in regard to their mission and problem operations. With huge operating budgets, state-of-the-art facilities, world-class athletes, and multinational corporate sponsors, these sport businesses strive to produce winning teams and profitable events every season. The outsourcing of marketing operations and rights is common practice in American college athletics today. According to Li and Burden (2002), more than one half of all NCAA Division I-A athletic programs have outsourced round or all of their marketing operations and rights to a growing number of nationally prominent outsourcing agencies. Among the operations commonly outsourced ar the production of radio game broadcasts, production of radio call-in shows, coaches television shows, sales of media and venue advertising, sales of official spons orship rights to corporations, and production and management of net websites, etc. (Li & Burden, 2002).Outsourcing simply means acquiring services from an external organization instead of using internal resources (Butler, 2000). By using outsourced resources, organizations can pip a competitive advantage by utilizing contingent staff to go through strategic goals without incurring the fixed everywherehead. By focusing on the confidential information edge and noblely specialized skill sets, outsourcing providers can often exsert higher quality services, or at a lower bell than the client organization. Typical reasons for outsourcing go beyond simple contingent staffing. Outsourcing providers are able to maintain economies of scale with regard to specialization (... ... bring the anticipate benefits, and in some instances can be a risky marriage offer (Chin, 2003). Villcocks and Lacity (1998) stated that among the possible disadvantages are the capability loss of control o ver critical functions such as timeliness and quality of service, difficulty in monitoring vendor performance, difficulty in explaining the business needs to vendors, the potential for loss of company secrets as hale as intellectual property, and the high cost of outsourcing contracts. Schools also risk developing a dependency on outside agencies, lowering employee morale, loss of development skills for employees, and having to face the prospect of managing relationships that go wrong (Kakabadse & Kakabadse, 2000 Hayes, 2001). By outsourcing, not only do schools lose some of the personal touch in servicing their employees but their clients as well (Rombel, 2002).