The Myth of the Amateur: A History of College Athletic Scholarships

Abstract

Amateurism in American college athletics never existed. From the earliest intercollegiate sports contests in the middle of the nineteenth century, athletes were compensated. The payment might have come as money, prizes, food, tuition, or in other forms, but it was always there. Within a decade of the initial competitions, coaches were paid to lead teams, often earning more for seasonal work than full-time professors or even college presidents made in a year. The myth of a pristine era when American college students played competitive sport for the sheer joy of participation never existed, but it did create an obvious discrepancy between that ideal and the professional reality that continues today.As with his other works, Ronald A. Smith exhibits mastery of the wonderful heritage and rich hypocrisy associated with the history of college sports. In The Myth of the Amateur, Smith uses an array of primary resources to trace the concept of amateurism on the American campus from its origins as an imitator of a faulty British model through more than a century and a half of often contradictory reform efforts. He organizes the book into seventeen chapters, addressing prominent issues of amateurism chronologically while placing topics within the broader context of subsequent events. Those topics include scholarships, training tables, athletic dorms, significant reports and meetings, women's sports, legal challenges, and others. Smith takes the reader from the earliest amateurism controversies of college sport in the middle of the nineteenth century to the name, image, and likeness (NIL) debates of the early decades of the twenty-first century.American colleges espousing amateurism while practicing professionalism is the foundation for the book. British upper classes created the notion of amateurism in the nineteenth century—essentially the idea that sport should be undertaken only for the love of the endeavor—because they did not want to participate with or compete against those considered socially beneath them. That this concept was attributed to a nonexistent ancient Greek ideal only made a dubious proposition worse because, as the gospel of so-called amateur sport spread, it assumed a moral superiority to professionalism in the minds of many. A parallel to the American college sports amateurism debate can be seen with the modern Olympic movement. Even if amateurism was historically held in higher esteem than professionalism, Smith points out that the aristocratic British model of sport had little chance of taking hold in a young America seething with the ideals of freedom and equality of opportunity. College leaders might preach the noble notion of sport for the sake of sport, but most also wanted to win, and they were usually willing to bend their principles in that pursuit.When Harvard rowed against Yale in 1852 at New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee in America's first intercollegiate athletic contest, the crew members were treated to an eight-day expenses-paid vacation for the event. Before the end of the Civil War, Yale students hired William Wood to coach their rowers in a successful effort to break Harvard's winning streak in the regatta. By 1905, Harvard was paying alum Bill Reid $7,000 to coach the Crimson football squad, a sum significantly higher than the salary of a US senator and twice what most Harvard faculty earned. Virtually every college compensated athletes, whether paying them directly, establishing training tables and dorms for athletes, or offering athletic scholarships.All those examples violated standards of amateurism, elicited consistently contradictory responses from college sport leaders, and created an atmosphere of reform that led to the formation of conferences and eventually a national governing body (NCAA) for big-time college sports. Smith's research shows that organized efforts to promote amateurism and constrain compensation have yielded mixed results at best.The chapter on summer baseball is telling. Starting in the 1870s and continuing well into the twentieth century, it was common for college athletes to earn money playing baseball in the summer. Some were paid outright, and others played at resorts for free room and board and a stipend. Either instance violated the code of amateurism, so players resorted to using fake names, which in turn led to frequent challenges to eligibility and charges of cheating. In a terrific overview that mentions prominent proponents of American amateur sport of the era, Smith summarizes the ineffectual efforts to curb summer baseball compensation. After decades of debate, the issue fizzled out in the late 1950s when the NCAA allowed participation in sanctioned leagues. The book is full of similar examples, told in compelling fashion.Ron Smith is a preeminent historian of American college sports, and The Myth of the Amateur should be an immediate read for any serious study of the topic.