Many now have programmes loosely modelled on GE's in-house academy, Crotonville, founded by Ralph Cordiner, who ran the company in the 1950s.
However, such in-house academies have become a lot more common in recent years.
More responsibility was transferred to professional clubs, which were required to improve their in-house academies.But even these lag behind their European rivals in the quantity and quality of their coaching.
For this reason, it is likely we will be looking for an alternative base to house our academy.
A proposed two-story annex will house the academy's education facilities, as well as a treatment room, sports laboratory and additional gym facilities.
City are investing more than £100m in a new complex to house their academy and development teams, due to open in the 2014-15 season.
Ignoring the reversal of its subject's fortunes that is Burlington House, the academy exposes his relics – a study of the Baths of Agrippa, fragments from the Quattro Libri – and asks merely that we worship them.
There are already signs of renewal: the year-old Euphoria Cafe, a sofa-stuffed coffee house on Academy Street, and Je's, a soul-food restaurant on Halsey Street, where Shaquille O'Neal and Queen Latifah dine when visiting their former hometown.
And the school's own in-house "careers academy" hammers home the message that, as Dr Hudson puts it bluntly, "You can't do anything without maths".
It flashes neon at night, houses an academy of Turkic studies and is supposed to promote reconciliation among the world's religions.
The basement houses the academy's trove of 17th- and 18th-century English wooden ship models, one of the two largest collections in the world.
