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Originally Posted by Jim Mills
That's the standard m.o. around here, too. By "sponsorship", I didn't mean to imply "financial support", or equal footing with a varsity program concerning facilities. It meant only that the school has to recognize the club and provide a faculty sponsor in order for it to be sanctioned by the NCBA. I'm not expert in the organization's operations, but I think it's to help ensure that only full-time, currently enrolled students are on the roster.
From a management study standpoint, it's a fascinating organization. It was started in the mid-90's by a Penn State student who got cut during varsity tryouts. In ten years it's grown to nearly 150 teams and 25 conferences across the country, complete with a national tournament culminating in an eight-team national championship series on Memorial Day weekend. They'll play it at the Red Sox's minor league park in Florida in 2007.
Not bad for a college kid who just wanted to keep playing.
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I am very familiar with Club Ball. My son played for a club team at a DI school. I think the team may have gotten a little money from the school for baseballs, but the players paid to play and it was always a puzzle to me why the team had to rent fields elsewhere for games when the "real college team" was playing a weekend series away. If the university really supported the team the field would be theirs when not in use. I expect some of the regular fans would come out to watch, if they only knew the club team existed.
There were several very good players on the team but they had a LH pitcher who played CF when not pitching and when pitching he was always listed as DH for himself, so that when he left the mound, if he left the mound, he would stay in to bat. He was Club team all american and what I could not figure out is why he was not playing on the big team.
There were no faculty reps that I could see, but all the players were confirmed as full time students (12 hours or more) and the coaches were former players/graduates who probably wanted to become a college coach someday.