Starting a college team

[mtrawls]

A lot has been discussed about this in the past, but here goes again ...

Next year I'll be off at UVA living the college life, and I am interested in starting a FIRST team. However, I'd be very interested to get some comments from those that have done this, especially as it relates to colleges.

First off, some random collections of my thoughts: What kind of involvment does the University have? Does it provide facilities, organization/administration and engineers? What roles do the various local high schools have in all of this? For those of you on college-sponsered teams, what are your thoughts on how all of this works? Is a high-school teacher needed too? In general, how willing are the colleges to do this, and what do you say to them?

Now, I'm going to be somewhat busy, I imagine (planning a triple major right now), so I'm also interested in the amount of time all this takes. It seems to me it might be reasonable to only get the college interested in it my first year, maybe talk some of the big shots into going to the nearby VCU regional, and start a team my second year there, after getting to know the professors/students and making contacts with local high schools. My concern is that I'll need a good group of kids interested in all of this before anyone wants to give the okay to it (especially sponsor support), and waiting to get everything together might mean the season starts a bit late for the team ... but I guess that could be okay.

Also, is anyone here heading off to UVA with me? I figure it should be easy to get support from my fellow Engineering students -- afterall, we can't let the no good Hokies take all the glory (err... let's just say UVA and VT have a bit of a rivalry, and my brother being at VT will just make it worse!).

Oh, and if anyone else is thinking about the same thing too at some other college, please chime in and we can collaborate about it all. I'm not sure if I can do all this, so these plans are, obviously, just preliminary ... thanks for any information.