Webmaster Inc. offers software for setting up your own IRC server. Its at
http://www.conferenceroom.com/products/productshome.cgi, but its a little expensive ($495 for the lowest version!) I downloaded their 30-day trial software a while ago and I was actually able to set up a server on my DSL. Maybe if some team(s) are willing to cough up the money someone could purchase it and set up a server. Personally, I think it would be really cool for Chief Delphi to have their own IRC server where teams could register private channels. They could have different discussion rooms like they do on these forums and stuff. Also the chat rooms can be moderated easily and there are plenty of administration bots out there to help moderate without an actual person there moderating (3 forms of moderate in the same sentence... ha).
Anyway, I think that IRC is the way to go with chat, nothing else is really comparable. The only disadvantage is it's a little more complicated for the newer chatters but once you get used to it, you realize how powerful it is.