Division I intercollegiate athletic departments, particularly those housing Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams, increasingly resemble the front offices of professional sports organizations regarding their mission and business operations. With huge operating budgets, state-of-the-art facilities, world-class athletes and multinational sponsors, these sports companies strive to produce winning teams and profitable events every season. Outsourcing operations and marketing rights is now a common practice in American college sports. According to Li and Burden (2002), more than half of all NCAA Division I-A athletic programs have outsourced some or all of their marketing operations and rights to a growing number of outsourcing agencies leading nationally. Commonly outsourced operations include the production of radio game broadcasts, the production of radio broadcasts, television coaching broadcasts, the sale of media and on-venue advertising, the sale of "official sponsorship" rights. » to businesses, as well as the production and management of 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 gain a competitive advantage by using contingent staff to achieve their strategic objectives without incurring fixed overhead costs. By focusing on cutting-edge, highly specialized skills, outsourcing providers can often offer services of higher quality, or at a lower price, than the client organization. Typical reasons for outsourcing go beyond simply recruiting casual staff. Outsourcing providers are able to maintain economies of scale with regard to specialization (...... middle of paper ...... bring the expected benefits and in some cases can be a proposition risky (Chin, 2003) stated that possible disadvantages include the potential loss of control over critical functions such as timeliness and quality of service, difficulty in monitoring supplier performance, difficulty explaining business needs to suppliers, the potential for loss of company secrets as well as intellectual property and the high cost of outsourcing contracts. Schools also risk developing a reliance on outside agencies. , leading to lower employee morale, loss of employee development skills, and the possibility of having to manage relationships that go sour (Kakabadse & Kakabadse, 2000; Hayes, 2001). By outsourcing, schools not only lose some of the personal touch of serving their employees, but also their customers (Rombel)., 2002).