(The following is Part 3 of a three-part series)

OK, so if details about playing and practice seasons, facilities, scholarships, uniforms and scoring formats can be ironed out over the next 15 months (see Part 1 and Part 2 of this series), how many schools will actually count sand volleyball toward their sport-sponsorship totals when they are allowed to do so on August 1, 2010?

Some people think this “emerging” sport will come out of the gate like a crisp serve, while others believe a sagging economy makes the sand game a tough dig.

Right now, informal college teams are multiplying in Divisions I and II to participate in spring tournaments. And many indoor teams use at least one of their spring competition dates for outdoor. Does that mean there’s a crowd at the starting gate?

Well, at least 10 NCAA schools signed the requisite letter of endorsement to get sand volleyball on the emerging-sport docket. One administrator said several more institutions were ready to sign if need be and that many others are at least considering the idea.

But adding any sport the right way takes a financial commitment that these days is tough to come by.

“There is a sense of urgency to save money right now, so putting money into an emerging sport may not be the answer,” said Nebraska indoor coach John Cook. “However, that doesn’t mean sand volleyball can’t become a successful emerging sport. People making decisions need to be creative on how this is going to look and how we can add it without spending much more money than we are spending right now.”

Middle Tennessee’s Matt Peck said the Sun Belt Conference supports the sport as a way for schools to balance participation opportunities for men and women. But he also wonders if athletics departments would add resources at a time when they’re more inclined to subtract.

Mark Rosen at Michigan said, “If we add sand volleyball, the money has to come from somewhere, and it may very well come either from what you already are doing in the indoor game or what you’re hoping to do with the indoor game.”

Even Rich Feller at California, a school that because of its location might be naturally inclined to play in the sand, told the San Francisco Chronicle recently that he is “hard-pressed” to see how this is going to work. “Are they going to give us more scholarships to have sand players who are not indoor players?” he said.

Cook is among the more enthusiastic supporters, however. He thinks even Feller’s legitimate question can be answered if volleyball in general would operate like track – with an indoor season and an outdoor season. That might be an appealing option for Division I programs that because of financial pressures are wondering whether to eliminate the nontraditional segment for their indoor teams anyway.

Cook also sees revenue potential for the sand game. Most indoor teams when they play outside in the spring don’t charge admission, he said. But that would change if sand were a varsity sport. Nebraska just completed its spring dates, selling 2,400 tickets for a home match, playing before 2,000 people in Hawaii and selling out Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, with a capacity crowd of 2,500.

“We generated probably $40,000-$50,000 in revenue just for spring,” Cook said.

To be sure, Cook realizes not everyone has Nebraska’s passionate fan base, but he thinks TV could create one for many schools. Because of the timing of the sand season when there’s a dearth of popular sports on TV, Cook thinks sand volleyball might end up being more televised than its indoor counterpart.

“In April and May, everything is more or less winding down,” he said, noting that sand wouldn’t have to compete against football or basketball for air time. Since TV already has reacted favorably to the sand game, Cook sees a potential fit.

But there’s still the resource issue locally, which includes not only scholarship dollars and facility investments but coaching staffs as well. Division I is proposing to add a countable coach for volleyball (Division II does not have staffing limits), but many current indoor coaches don’t see their athletics departments funding one at this time. That means that if sand volleyball is going to work, the indoor coaches may have to take it on themselves.

“There’s no question that our administrations would assume that we’d coach both,” said Michigan’s Rosen. “I don’t fear that, though – we work year-round anyway – it’ll just mean that we’re working differently. It will mean that we will spend the key recruiting period for indoor also traveling with the sand team, but we’ll make it work.”

Cook says bring it on, too. “You look at track – they have one more coach than we do with about 100 more kids. And again, I can’t see myself going to my AD and saying we need another coach for sand volleyball,” Cook said.

Kathy DeBoer, the executive director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association, said the coaching question is a legitimate concern. “As we develop rules for recruiting and the number of days you can be on the road and how many coaches can be on the road, those work/life balance issues are going to be things we want to take under consideration,” she said.

Whether this new sport has a chance to be a sand sensation is anybody’s guess, but at first glance, there appears to be more optimism than doubt – and even the latter seems more founded in uncertainty than disdain.

The core demand is that sand volleyball must flourish without taking anything away from the success of the indoor game. College coaches and administrators say they have worked too hard to build the indoor game to the second-highest spectator sport for women behind basketball to give anything away.

“I don’t begrudge sand volleyball – actually, I think this game is going to take off – but I want us to check all the unintended consequences before we do it,” Rosen said. “I don’t want the sand game to take resources away from the indoor game and regionalize the sport. I don’t want to trade one well-supported sport for two mediocre-supported sports.”

Rosen’s peers don’t, either.

“Almost every coach wants the sport to grow,” DeBoer said, “but many are raising legitimate concerns. And on some we’re just not going to know the impact until we get there.

“All I know for certain is that sand volleyball is so made for a college campus – a nice spring day on a college campus with a sand volleyball match against your arch rival would be a wildly popular thing.”

Now it’s up to the sands of time to tell whether the collegiate community can pull this off without a net loss.

So ... Sand volleyball, anyone?

See Champion magazine online for a PDF version of this entire series.