|
Amateurism (from Fr. amateur "lover of," from O.Fr., from L. amatoremnom. amator, "lover,"). Based on etymology, an Amateur is someone who engages in an activity out of love. As a value system, amateurism elevates things done without self-interest above those done for pay (i.e., professionalism). The term has particular currency in its usage with regard to sports. By definition amateur sports require participants to participate without remuneration. Amateurism was a zealously guarded ideal in the 19th century, especially among the upper classes, but faced steady erosion throughout the 20th century, and is now strictly held as an ideal by fewer and fewer organizations governing sports, even as they maintain the word "amateur" in their titles. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...
The word amateur has at least two connotations. ...
The word amateur has at least two connotations. ...
A profession is a specialized work function within society, generally performed by a professional. ...
Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The term "shamateurism" has been coined to refer to the hypocrisy which arose in some highly competitive sports where it became common for individuals or organizations to extend to "amateur" competitors financial rewards for their participation or achievements, in effect making a "sham" of their amateur status.
Background In the United Kingdom sport had always been the preserve of the rich who were the only people who had free time in which to pursue sport, the working classes worked six days a week and sport was forbidden on the sabbath. The traditional mass sports that did exist were mostly played on public holidays e.g. Shrove Tuesday when traditional 'mob football' was popular. When the 'Factories Act' gave working men half a day off the opportunity to take part in sport was suddenly available. Unlike the rich where payment had never been an issue working class sportsmen found it hard to play top level sport due the need to turn up to work. Hence there were competing interests between those who wished sport to be open to all and those who feared that professionalism would destroy the 'Corinthian spirit'. This article concerns the Sabbath in Christianity. ...
A typical meal of pancakes In the Christian calendar, Shrove Tuesday is the English name for the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, which in turn marks the beginning of Lent. ...
The Factory Acts were a series of acts passed by the British Parliament to limit the number of hours worked by women and children first in the textile industry, then later in all industries. ...
Proponents of the amateur ideal deplored the influence of money and the effect it has on sports. It was claimed that it is in the interest of the professional to receive the highest amount of pay possible per unit of performance, not to perform to the highest standard possible where this does not bring additional benefit. An example of Money. ...
Strict prohibition of professionals was held to inhibit the stated goals of celebrating the highest standards of performance, and this argument has generally defeated amateurism around the world in many sports.
The present day By the early 21st Century the Olympic Games and all the major team sports accepted professional competitors. However, there are still some sports which maintain a distinction between amateur and professional status with separate competitive leagues. Most prominent of these is golf. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
For months before the Olympic Games, runners relay the Olympic Flame from Olympia to the opening ceremony. ...
Golfer after swing. ...
Problems can arise for amateur sportsmen when sponsors offer to help with an amateur's playing expenses in the hope of striking lucrative endorsement deals with them in case they become professionals at a later date. This may jeopardize their status as amateurs, and if allowed to let slide, may be seen as corruption or cheating rather than as true "shamateurism".
Where professionals are permitted, it is hard for amateurs to compete against them. Whether this is a triumph of the free market or an example of corruption depends on the viewer's perspective. To some an amateur means an incompetent and to others an idealist. To say that the athlete should not be paid can prevent performances only possible for an athlete who is free to pursue the sport fulltime without other sources of income; to make payment for performance the driving engine of the sport can invite cynicism and inflated wages. A truly idealist maximisation of athletic excellence without mercenary motive seems beyond human capacity. A free market is an idealized market, where all economic decisions and actions by individuals regarding transfer of money, goods, and services are voluntary, and are therefore devoid of coercion and theft (some definitions of coercion are inclusive of theft). Colloquially and loosely, a free market economy is an economy...
In philosophy, idealism is any theory positing the primacy of spirit, mind, or language over matter. ...
A mercenary is a soldier who fights, or engages in warfare primarily for private gain, usually with little regard for ideological, national or political considerations. ...
North american collegiate athletics All north american University sports are conducted by amateurs, and even the most commercialized college sports, such as NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball, do not financially compensate competitors, although coaches and trainers generally are. Athletic scholarship programs, unlike academic scholarship programs, cannot cover more than the cost of food, housing, tuition, and other university-related expenses. A promising academic can be paid to go to school, but a promising athlete cannot. NCAA Basketball (known as World League Basketball in Europe [1])is a basketball video game developed by Sculptured Software for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. ...
In order to insure that the rules are not circumvented, stringent rules restrict gift-giving during the recruitment process as well as during a collegiate athlete's career; college athletes also cannot endorse products, which some may consider a violation of free speech rights.
Some have criticised this system as exploitative; prominent university athletics programs are major commercial endeavors, and can easily rake in millions of dollars in profit during a successful season. College athletes spend a great deal of time "working" for the university, and earn nothing from it at the time; basketball and football coaches, meanwhile, earn salaries that can compare with those of professional teams' coaches.
The most ardent critics of collegiate athletics say one of two things. First, that young athletes (stereotypically young black men) are being encouraged to waste their time chasing after a career in basketball or football for four years rather than focus on getting an education while in college. Second, that colleges have no business wasting time and effort in developing apparently "professional" athletic programs, as they should be concentrating on educating people.
Supporters of the system say that college athletes can always make use of the education they earn as students if their athletic career doesn't pan out, and that allowing universities to pay college athletes would rapidly lead to deterioration of the already-marginal academic focus of college athletics programs. They also point out that athletic scholarships allow many young men and women who would otherwise been unable to afford to go to college, or would not be accepted, to get a quality education.
The Olympics - See Olympic Games: Amateurism and professionalism
Until the late 20th century the Olympics nominally only accepted amateur athletes. However, successful Olympians from Western countries often had endorsement contracts from sponsors. Complex rules involving the payment of the athlete's earnings into trust funds rather than directly to the athletes themselves, were developed in an attempt to work around this issue, but the intellectual evasion involved was considered embarrassing to the Olympic movement and the key Olympic sports by some. In the same era, the nations of the Communist bloc entered teams of Olympians who were all nominally students or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full time basis. For months before the Olympic Games, runners relay the Olympic Flame from Olympia to the opening ceremony. ...
(19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the...
Sponsors in the 12 step tradition help the addict to recover by bringing a personal experience of recovery on a one to one basis. ...
During the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc (or Soviet Bloc) comprised the following Central and Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Albania (until the early 1960s, see below), the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. ...
Students attending a lecture at the Helsinki University of Technology The word student is etymologically derived through Middle English from the Latin second-type conjugation verb stÅdÄ“rÄ•, meaning to direct ones zeal at; hence a student is one who directs zeal at a subject. ...
Jim Thorpe was stripped of track and field medals for having taken expense money for playing baseball in 1912. After the 1972 retirement of IOC President Avery Brundage, the Olympic amateurism rules were steadily relaxed and in many areas amount only to technicalities and lip service. In the United States, the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 prohibits national governing bodies from having more stringent standards of amateur status than required by international governing bodies of respective sports. This article is about the athlete. ...
Athletics, also known as track and field or track and field athletics, is a collection of sport events. ...
1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...
1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ...
Alternative meanings at IOC (disambiguation) The International Olympic Committee is an organization based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin in 1894 to reinstate the Ancient Olympic Games held in Greece, and organize this sports event every four years. ...
Avery Brundage (September 28, 1887 – May 8, 1975) was an American athlete, sports official, art collector, and philanthropist. ...
1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ...
In 1982 Adidas was paying British Olympic athletes to wear their gear. The main person involved in the scandal was Horst Dassler. Adidas is a German sports apparel manufacturer, part of the Adidas Group. ...
Son of Adi Dassler who founded Adidas. ...
Olympic amateurism regulations were eventually abandoned in the 1990s. See also 1990s, the band Seinfeld was a pop cultural phenomenon during the 90s and became one of the most popular TV programs ever. ...
Rugby League and Union The team sport which has had the greatest problems with shamateurism is probably rugby union. At one time rugby had been popular with both the middle and working classes in England yet working class players found it hard to play away games or to cope with injuries. 'Boot money' had long been paid to certain players to help them cope with expenses. The struggle between clubs that supported 'broken time payments' and those that supported a stricter interpretation of amateurism came to a head in 1895 when clubs from the North of England broke away to form the Northern Rugby Union (later known as the Rugby Football League), whose rules eventually diverged from the RFU's, forming the sport now known as rugby league. Rugby league stayed an amateur sport for 3 years following the great schism with the exception of allowing payment for missing work through playing commitments or injury, after this they allowed players to be paid for playing as long as they had a regular job. Full-time professionalism did not come into rugby league until much later and amateurism continued in the form of the British Amateur Rugby League Association. Team mates cooperate to beat the other team Team sport is a term used to distinguish between sports based on one-on-one direct confrontation (such as most raquet sports, boxing or Martial arts) or timed races (such as athletics or swimming), as opposed to those which are practiced between...
General phase play in rugby union. ...
A Rugby player Rugby football refers to sports descended from a common form of football developed at Rugby School. ...
Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location (dark green) within the United Kingdom (light green), with the Republic of Ireland (blue) to its west Languages English Capital London Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population –mid-2004...
The Rugby Football League (RFL) is the governing body for Rugby League in the United Kingdom. ...
The Rugby Football Union (RFU) is the rugby union governing body in England. ...
Rugby league is a team sport, played by two teams of 13 players. ...
Rugby league is a team sport, played by two teams of 13 players. ...
The British Amateur Rugby League Association (BARLA) is the governing body for social and recreational rugby league in the United Kingdom. ...
Rugby union was to officially remain an amateur sport for the next 100 years. This was occasionally strictly enforced as in the famous case of Jock Wemyss who in 1920 was told that he could not be given a Scotland shirt for his second cap since they had given him one six years earlier. In 1931 France was even expelled from the Five Nations Championship following allegations that their domestic league was in fact professional, but without any noticeable changes they were allowed to rejoin just before World War II. General phase play in rugby union. ...
The Six Nations Championship (referred to as RBS 6 Nations for sponsorship reasons), (2000-) formerly known as the Five Nations Championship, is an annual international rugby union competition held between six European sides; England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. ...
Combatants Allies: Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France/Free France, United States, China, Canada, India, Australia, Poland, New Zealand, South Africa, Greece, and others Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan, Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Burma, Slovakia Casualties Military dead: 17 million Civilian dead: 33 million Total dead: 50 million Military dead: 8...
The union authorities placed severe sanctions on associations with rugby league. Even playing an amateur game was sufficient to receive a ban from the sport. In one incident in the early 1900s a union team from Huddersfield played a charity match against a local league side; all the players were subsequently banned for being "professionalised". Union players who actually went to play professional league were routinely banned for life from even attending rugby union matches as supporters. In 1959 Michael Jopling, the Conservative candidate for election in Wakefield was invited to kick off one half of a Wakefield Trinity home match. He was later informed by his local rugby union club that he had "professionalised" himself and that he was no longer welcome at the club [1]. Huddersfield is a large town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees within the County of West Yorkshire in England. ...
Thomas Michael Jopling, Baron Jopling, PC (born December 10, 1930) is a politician in the United Kingdom, and sits in the House of Lords as a member of the Conservative Party. ...
The Conservative Party is one of the two largest political parties in the United Kingdom and the most successful party in political history based on election victories. ...
Wakefield Wakefield is a city in the county of West Yorkshire, England, south of Leeds, and by the River Calder. ...
Wakefield Trinity are a professional rugby league club based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. ...
Payment for expenses was often permitted however. The "amateur" 1908 Australian rugby union tourists to Britain received payment of 21 shillings a week, more than twice the payment for players on the following season's "professional" Great Britain rugby league tour of Australasia.Note 1 1908 (MCMVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ...
The shilling (or informally: bob) was an English coin first issued in 1548 for Henry VIII, although arguably the testoon issued about 1487 for Henry VII was the first English shilling. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Oceania. ...
By the 1980s and 1990s there were mounting allegations that the top players were in fact making a living from the game. The Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport of the British House of Commons observed [2]: A Select Committee is a committee made up of a small number of parliamentary members appointed to deal with particular areas or issues originating in the Westminster System of parliamentary democracy. ...
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (sometimes abbreviated DCMS) is a department of the British government. ...
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ...
- "The absorption of professionalism into Rugby Union in the Northern Hemisphere was dictated by the reality of shamateurism at the highest levels of the game, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, where the pretence of amateur status had become severely undermined and unsustainable."
- "Although Rugby Union had been ostensibly amateur since its birth, the regulations prohibiting professionalism were not, in practice, enforced. Governing bodies "turned a blind eye" to breaches of the regulations."
With the advent of the World Cup and the Tri Nations, rugby union had become a big TV ratings draw and there were rumours of a Rupert Murdoch-financed breakaway professional league much as had already happened in Australian rugby league. Finally in 1995 the International Rugby Board decided to open the sport to professionals following the World Cup. The William Webb Ellis Trophy, the main prize of the Rugby Union World Cup The Rugby World Cup is the premier international Rugby Union contest in the world, first held jointly in Australia and New Zealand in 1987, a full 33 years after the first Rugby League World Cup and...
The Tri Nations Series is an annual international Rugby Union series held between Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. ...
Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KCSG, (born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American citizen, based in New York City, who is a major shareholder and the Chairman and Managing Director of News Corporation. ...
The Super League war was a battle for the control of broadcast rights for the sport of Rugby League. ...
1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The International Rugby Board (IRB; known until 1998 as the International Rugby Football Board (IRFB)) and headquartered on St. ...
1995 Rugby Union World Cup - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...
Cricket English cricket maintained a division between amateur and professional cricketers until 1963, but ways were sometimes found to give the "amateurs" financial compensation, especially after 1945. Cricket even went so far as to have annual "Gentlemen versus Players" games between amateurs and professionals and there were requirements for "players" to refer to "gentlemen" as Mister or Sir whereas "gentlemen" would refer to "players" by their surnames. Since the early Nineteenth century, cricket has gradually developed from an amateur recreational sport in England into a fully professional international sport from which leading players can earn a large income. ...
Football (soccer) Boot money has been a phenomenon in amateur sport for centuries. The term "boot money" became popularized in the 1880s when it was not unusual for players to find half a crown (corresponding to 12½ pence after decimalisation) in their boots after a game. On February 15, 1971, variously known as Decimal Day, Decimalisation Day and D-Day, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland decimalised their historical currencies; although they were separate currencies — Pound sterling and Irish pound respectively — they were at the time tied to each other at a fixed 1...
The Football Association prohibited paying players until 1885, and this is referred to as the "legalization" of professionalism because it was an amendment of the "Laws of the Game". However, a maximum salary cap of twelve pounds a week for a player with outside employment and fifteen pounds a week for a player with no outside employment lingered until the 1960s even as transfer fees reached over a hundred thousand pounds; again, "boot money" was seen as a way of topping up pay. Today the most prominent English football clubs that are not professional are semi-professional (paying part-time players more than the old maximum for top professionals) and the most prominent true amateur club is probably Corinthian-Casuals F.C. (descended from the club that was once Britain's finest in the 19th century but today four divisions below the Football League). Amateur football is now found mainly in small village and Sunday clubs and the Amateur Football Alliance. The Football Association (The FA) is the governing body of football in England (and the Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man). ...
1885 (MDCCCLXXXV) is a common year starting on Thursday. ...
The outrageously crowded Woodstock festival epitomized the popular antiwar movement of the 60s. ...
Corinthian-Casuals F.C. are a football club currently playing in the Isthmian League First Division South, formed in 1939 by a merger of two famous amateur clubs, Corinthians, who formed in 1882, and Casuals, who formed in 1883. ...
Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Football League logo The Football League (often referred to as the Coca-Cola Football League for sponsorship reasons) is a league competition for English football clubs (though three Welsh clubs also take part) containing three divisions (the Football League Championship, Football League One and Football League Two) that occupy...
The Amateur Football Alliance is a County Football Association in England. ...
Sailing Ironically, sailing has taken the opposite course. Around the turn of the century, much of sailing was professionals paid by interested idle rich. Today, sailing, especially dinghy sailing, is an example of a sport which is still largely populated by amateurs. For example, in the recent Team Racing Worlds, and certainly the American Team Racing Nationals, most of the sailors competing in the event were amateurs. While many competitive sailors are employed in buisnesses related to sailing (primarily sailmaking, naval architecture, boatbuilding and coaching), most are not compensated for their own competitions. In large keelboat racing, such as the Volvo Around the World Race and the America's Cup, this amateur spirit has given way in recent years to large corporate sponsorships and paid crews, but even there one will occasionally find a team that stays true to the Corinthian ideal. Sailing at sunset Wooden sailing boat Sailing is the skillful art of controlling the motion of a sailing ship or smaller boat, across a body of water. ...
Dinghy of the schooner Adventuress A dinghy is a small utility boat attached to a larger boat. ...
Figure Skating Like other Olympic sports, figure skating used to have very strict amateur status rules. Over the years, these rules were relaxed to allow competitive skaters to receive token payments for performances in exhibitions (amid persistent rumors that they were receiving more money "under the table"), then to accept money for professional activities such as endorsements provided that the payments were made to trust funds rather than to the skaters themselves. Figure skating is an ice skating sporting event where individuals, mixed couples, or groups perform spins, jumps, and other moves on the ice, often to music. ...
In 1992, trust funds were abolished, and the International Skating Union voted both to remove most restrictions on amateurism, and to allow skaters who had previously lost their amateur status to apply for reinstatement of their eligibility. A number of skaters, including Brian Boitano, Katarina Witt, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, and Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, took advantage of the reinstatement rule to compete at the 1994 Winter Olympics. However, when all of these skaters promptly returned to the pro circuit again, the ISU decided the reinstatement policy was a failure and it was discontinued in 1995. 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ...
The International Skating Union (ISU) is the international governing body for competitive ice skating disciplines, including figure skating, synchronized skating, speed skating, and short track speed skating. ...
Brian Anthony Boitano (born October 22, 1963 in Mountain View, CA) is an American figure skater from Sunnyvale, California. ...
Katarina Witt (December 3, 1965, Staaken) is a German figure skater, in Germany commonly affectionately called Kati Witt. Won two Olympic Gold Medals for East Germany, first in the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics and the second in 1988 at the Calgary Olympics. ...
Jayne Torvill (born October 7, 1957, Nottingham, United Kingdom) is a British figure skater who won a gold medal in ice dancing at the 1984 Winter Olympics with her skating partner Christopher Dean and a bronze medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics. ...
Christopher Colin Dean (born July 22, 1958 in Nottingham, Great Britain) is a British figure skater who won a gold medal in ice dancing at the 1984 Winter Olympics with his skating partner Jayne Torvill. ...
Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Gordeeva (born May 28, 1971) is an Olympic and world figure skating champion. ...
Sergei Mikhailovich Grinkov (February 4, 1967 - November 20, 1995, Lake Placid, New York, United States) was an Olympic and World figure skating champion. ...
The XVII Olympic Winter Games were held in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway. ...
1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Prize money at ISU competitions was introduced in 1995, paid by the sale of the television rights to those events. In addition to prize money, Olympic-eligible skaters may also earn money through appearance fees at shows and competitions, endorsements, movie and television contracts, coaching, and other "professional" activities, provided that their activities are approved by their national federations. The only activity that is strictly forbidden by the ISU is participating in unsanctioned "pro" competitions, which the ISU uses to maintain their monopoly status as the governing body in the sport. 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Many people in the skating world still use "turning pro" as jargon to mean retiring from competitive skating, even though most top competitive skaters are already full-time professionals, and many skaters who retire from competition to concentrate on show skating or coaching do not actually lose their competition eligibility in the process.
Other sports Major tennis championships prohibited professionals until 1968 but the subsequent admission of professionals virtually eliminated amateurs from public visibility. Golf still has amateur championships but their champions are far more obscure than professional champions and very few of those who compete in open events are not professionals. Paying players was considered disreputable in baseball until 1869. The Australian Rod Laver, a candidate for the greatest player of all time This article is about the sport. ...
1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ...
Golfer after swing. ...
A view of the playing field at Busch Stadium II St. ...
1869 (MDCCCLXIX) is a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar. ...
Footnote - Gate, Robert (1989). Illustrated History of Rugby League, p48. Arthur Barker. ISBN 0-21-316970-3
See also Since the early Nineteenth century, cricket has gradually developed from an amateur recreational sport in England into a fully professional international sport from which leading players can earn a large income. ...
The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ...
Football games of various types were played long before the 19th century but it was not until the middle of that century that rules were formulated and codified. ...
The history of rugby league began with the schism of 1895 in the sport of rugby football. ...
The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...
External Links |
Feeds |
Contact