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The Myth and Reality of Elite Amateur Sport
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14907 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1988 |
4,236 Words |
| Author
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D. Stanley Eitzen
D. Stanley Eitzen is emeritus professor of sociology at
Colorado State University. Among his books are two on sport,
Sport in Contemporary Sport and The Sociology of North
American Sport. He is a 1996 Sports Ethics Fellow of the
Institute for International Sport. |
Jim Thorpe, the legendary Native American athlete, was stripped of his two gold medals from the 1912 Olympics when the Olympic Committee found that prior to the Olympics, he had received sixty dollars a month during the summer for playing semiprofessional baseball. This act by an athlete, accepting money for participation, made Jim Thorpe a professional and therefore not eligible for Olympic participation. Now some seventy-five years later athletes who are sponsored by corporations and who receive appearance moneys and monetary prizes for success are eligible to compete in the Olympic Games. Some of these so-called amateurs earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. Obviously, the operational definition of "amateur" has changed in the intervening years. But in some non-Olympic arenas the amateur codes prevail even today. College athletes, for example, will lose their eligibility if they accept compensation beyond room, board, books, and tuition, or even if they select an agent in anticipation of a professional career. These shifting and contradictory ideas regarding amateurism raise several related questions that we will explore: (1) Is the amateur ideal in sport an appropriate goal and, if so, at what level? (2) Is the notion of amateur an outmoded concept? (3) When elite sport is organized to promote amateurism, who benefits and who does not? and (4) Is the amateur ideal attainable in contemporary society?
Defining the Amateur
In the abstract, there is a consensus on what constitutes an amateur. The word amateur is derived from the Latin amator, which means "lover." In short, the amateur is one who participates in sport because of love for the sport. This fundamental motivation implies that (1) the amateur derives pleasure from the contest; (2) the activity is freely chosen; (3) the process is every bit as important as the outcome; (4) the motivation to participate comes from the intrinsic rewards of the activity rather than the extrinsic rewards of money and fame; and (5) because there is a love of sport for its own sake, there is a climate of sportsmanship surrounding amateur sport. Regarding this last point, political scientist Andrew Strenk has said, "The term 'amateur' is an ethical word, suggesting that a certain moral conduct is expected [fair play, honesty, and a genuine respect for one's opponent]. Another distinguishing characteristic of the amateur is that the activity is pursued as an avocation rather than a vocation, as leisure rather than work. As Avery Brundage, the longtime defender of the amateur ideal in the Olympic Games, argued: "Sport is recreation, it is a pastime or a diversion, it is play, it is action for amusement, it is free, spontaneous and joyous--it is the opposite of
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