Amateur vs. Professional Debate
- 1 NCAA’s Early Commitment to Amateurism
- 2 NCAA Adopts Athletic Scholarships
- 3 Scholarships: Gifts or Contracts for Hire?
- 4 Are College Athletes Amateurs or Paid Professionals?
- 5 The Future
On one side of this debate people argue that regardless of the amount of money generated by college sport, college athletes are amateurs engaged in sport as an extracurricular activity during their free time. Thus, the primary rewards for athletic participation are, and ought to be, educational, social, and physical in nature. On the other side of this debate people argue that the unprecedented commercialization of college sport in recent years is transforming college athletes into professional entertainers for whom maintaining athletic eligibility often takes precedence over obtaining a meaningful education. Some people who take this position think that college athletes should be paid stipends in addition to their athletic scholarships and receive medical and other benefits not unlike those available to athletes in openly professional leagues.
How this debate is ultimately resolved is likely to have a profound effect on the future of college sport in the United States. Therefore, the major arguments on both sides of this debate deserve close scrutiny. Because controversies regarding amateurism and professionalism in college sport can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, and because the nature of these controversies has evolved through time, we should place this discussion in a historical context.
NCAA’s Early Commitment to Amateurism
Since its inception in 1905 the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been a strong advocate of the concept of amateurism. At its first convention the NCAA took a firm stand against the practices that it thought violated amateur ideals. Included among those practices were “the offering of inducements to players to enter colleges because of their athletic abilities or supporting or maintaining players while students on account of their athletic abilities, either by athletic organizations, individual alumni, or otherwise directly or indirectly” (NCAA 1906, 33). Athletic scholarships, according to the NCAA, were a violation of amateurism. At this point in history the NCAA’s views on amateurism bore a close resemblance to those of British colleges.
The definition of an amateur athlete first appeared in NCAA bylaws in 1916. According to article VI(b), “an amateur is one who participates in competitive physical sports only for the pleasure, and the physical, mental, moral, and social benefits directly derived there from” (NCAA 1916, 118). This definition was amended in 1922 to include a phrase saying that college sport is an “avocation.” The NCAA did not oppose financial aid for needy students. It opposed scholarships and other inducements awarded on the basis of athletic ability. Its concern was that paying the expenses of students because of their athletic ability might attract students for whom sport, not education, was the top priority. Such payments, the NCAA feared, would set athletes apart from other students as professionals.
Throughout the early twentieth century the NCAA continued to be philosophically opposed to athletic scholarships and other forms of professionalism. At that point in history, however, the NCAA had no enforcement power other than moral suasion. As a result, violations of amateurism were commonplace. According to a study carried out by the Carnegie Foundation in 1929, subsidization of athletes in violation of NCAA principles occurred in 81 of the 112 colleges studied, and other colleges likely were in violation but concealed such practices. During that period athletes were often paid for doing jobs that required little or no work. Alumni provided loans to athletes with no expectation of repayment. Some schools had slush funds totaling thousands of dollars from which they made under-thetable payments to talented athletes.
None of this was particularly surprising. During the early twentieth century sport at many colleges became far more than an extracurricular diversion for students. On the contrary, as spectator sport grew in popularity, winning teams not only attracted paying spectators and substantial media attention, but also provided a rallying point for alumni whose support was crucial to institutional growth. In many states winning athletic teams, especially football, provided tax-paying citizens with their only point of attachment with their state university. Schools made large investments in massive stadiums and athletic infrastructure to remain competitive. Given the high stakes involved, colleges could no longer trust the fortunes of their athletic teams to students engaging in sport as an extracurricular pastime. As a result, the pressure to recruit and subsidize talented athletes increased dramatically, and the NCAA’s commitment to traditional amateur principles was increasingly put to the test.
NCAA Adopts Athletic Scholarships
The NCAA’s early opposition to athletic scholarships was consistent with its vision that athletes be regular students rather than a separate class of athletic specialists, recruited and subsidized to provide entertainment for the general public. During the mid-1950s, however, rampant commercialism and the widespread practice of paying the educational and living expenses of athletes in defiance of the NCAA’s amateur code forced the NCAA to reverse its position on athletic scholarships. In 1957 the NCAA decided to allow schools to pay the room, board, tuition, fees, and laundry expenses of athletes with no financial need or remarkable academic ability.This decision is a watershed in the history of college sport in the United States.
According to Walter Byers, executive director of the NCAA at the time, this decision was made in part because the NCAA believed it might help to eliminate some of the under-the-table payments to athletes from alumni that had become so common. Regardless of the NCAA’s motives, by adopting athletic scholarships, the NCAA undeniably was sanctioning a practice that it had previously defined as a form of professionalism. Those people who believe that the scholarship system represented a significant break with amateurism have described it as a nationwide money-laundering scheme whereby money formally given to athletes under the table can now be funneled through a school’s financial aid office.
Those people who do not see the NCAA’s 1957 decision as a violation of amateur principles would argue, however, that because athletic scholarships were limited to educational and living expenses, they were not much different from academic scholarships that are awarded to help students with special talents complete their college degrees. From the NCAA’s perspective, whether an athlete receives an athletic scholarship or not has no bearing on his or her amateur status.What matters is whether the amount of the award exceeds what the NCAA allows. According to the NCAA, “a professional athlete is one who receives any kind of payment, directly or indirectly, for athletics participation except as permitted by the governing legislation of the Association” (NCAA 1996, 69). Before the late 1950s athletic scholarships were considered to be pay; now they are not.
Scholarships: Gifts or Contracts for Hire?
When they were adopted, the NCAA’s rules on athletic scholarships allowed them to be awarded for four years, and these scholarships could not be taken away for injury or failure to live up to a coach’s expectations. The only condition for renewal was satisfactory academic progress. In other words, these early scholarships were gifts awarded to talented athletes to help them pay for their education. Even athletes who decided to voluntarily withdraw from sport could retain their scholarship. At this point in the evolution of athletic grants-in-aid, athletes were under no contractual obligation to play sport. Under these conditions one would have difficulty in arguing that scholarships constituted “pay for play.”
During the 1960s coaches and athletic directors became concerned that athletes were accepting athletic grants and then refusing to participate. In 1967 the NCAA passed a rule to address this problem.This rule, referred to as the “fraudulent misrepresentation rule,” allows a school to immediately cancel the financial aid of an athlete who has signed a letter of intent to play sport but voluntarily withdraws. The 1967 rule also allows the cancellation of aid to athletes who refuse to follow the directions of athletic staff members or who make only token appearances at practices. Because this rule makes athletic participation a contractual obligation and allows the cancellation of financial aid for insubordination, one can argue that it substantially increases the control that coaches have over their players.
The fraudulent misrepresentation rule allows coaches to withdraw financial aid from athletes who decide not to play or who do not make a serious effort to contribute to a team’s success. However, the rule does not allow the withdrawal of aid from an athlete who is injured or who does not meet a coach’s performance expectations. In 1973 the NCAA replaced four-year athletic scholarships with one-year renewable grants. Although these grants cannot be withdrawn during the one-year period of their award because of injury or poor athletic performance, renewal for a subsequent year can be conditioned on an athlete’s performance or injury status. This rule, one can argue, creates a relationship between an athlete and a coach that is somewhat akin to employment.
Are College Athletes Amateurs or Paid Professionals?
The position of the NCAA and those who share its view of college sport is that college athletes are in fact amateurs and that athletic scholarships are educational gifts rather than contracts for hire. From their perspective, those people who argue that college athletes should be paid beyond what the NCAA currently allows are not only violating amateur principles but also are sending the message to young athletes that college sport is about money, not education.The NCAA argues that it is committed to maintaining college athletes as an integral part of the student body and maintaining athletics as an integral part of the educational program. Paying athletes more than their educational expenses would set athletes apart from the rest of the student body as paid professionals. Open professionalism, they argue, would also destroy the competitive balance so crucial to sport.
The NCAA and its supporters are aware that the NCAA has reversed its position on athletic scholarships since 1906, but they view this reversal as a necessary accommodation to the democratic values of modern U.S. life. The traditional—or British—approach to amateurism allows few but members of the elite leisure class to participate in sport as amateurs. By allowing athletic scholarships the NCAA has provided an opportunity to play college sport to students who would not have had time to do so if they had to work to pay college tuition. One can also argue that merit awards help colleges to attract students with special talents in a wide variety of areas, only one of which is athletics. Whether the area is music, art, or athletics, colleges ought to be committed to excellence.
Although the changes in NCAA rules regarding athletic scholarships are generally not mentioned in public debates over whether college athletes are, or should be, amateurs or professionals, these changes are crucial to this debate.Those people who are critical of the NCAA and accuse it of hypocrisy often argue that the NCAA abandoned amateurism in 1957 by adopting athletic scholarships.Then, by passing the fraudulent misrepresentation rule in 1967 and replacing four-year scholarships with one-year renewable ones in 1973, the NCAA completed the process of transforming amateur athletes into professional employees who can be “fired” for not performing to a coach’s expectations.
In line with this argument, one could argue that the NCAA’s insistence on defining college athletes as amateurs has more to do with maintaining a salary cap on how much money athletes can make from college sport than with protecting time-honored amateur and educational principles. In other words, amateurism has become an exploitative ideology that has little relationship to objective reality but rather defends the economic interests of those who control the college sport industry. According to this argument, the NCAA abandoned amateurism and transformed athletes into underpaid professionals. Those people who insist that college athletes deserve a larger share of the revenue they generate are merely trying to ensure that athletes are treated fairly.
The Drake Group takes a slightly different position on the amateur versus professional debate. The Drake Group is an organization composed of faculty members and others committed to defending academic integrity in college sport.The Drake Group is totally opposed to paying college athletes for competing in what ought to be an extracurricular activity. However, it places the responsibility for professionalizing college sport directly on the NCAA and its member institutions. If the NCAA were truly committed to amateurism, argues the Drake Group, it would replace one-year renewable scholarships with grants that are based on financial need.This is the model of college sport that has been adopted in the Ivy League and in the NCAA’s Division III. According to the Drake Group, athletes who receive athletically related financial aid are not amateurs and should have the same rights as other professional athletes. However, the Drake Group would prefer a return to what it views as true amateur sport.
The Future
As college sport becomes increasingly commercialized during the decades to come, demands by athletes for a greater share of the revenue they generate likely will increase, and athletes may well take their cases to the courts and to various legislative bodies. In 2003 the state of Nebraska passed legislation that would require college football players to be paid a stipend in addition to the scholarships they receive. Similar legislation is being considered in the state of California and elsewhere. The NCAA and the powerful academic institutions that it represents will undoubtedly oppose such legislation and take the position that amateur traditions must be preserved to protect academic integrity.
The argument that college sport is amateur and educational rather than an unrelated business of colleges has generally allowed the sport industry to hold off challenges that it has faced in court. For instance, injured players seeking workers’ compensation benefits to this point have not been recognized by the courts as employees. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has likewise been relatively unsuccessful in getting the courts to recognize revenue from college sport as taxable unrelated business income.Thus far the NCAA has functioned as an effective lobby to defend its claim that college athletes are amateurs and that college sport is not a business.
However, challenges to the claim that college sport is primarily educational and that athletes are merely amateurs are likely to increase during the years to come as college sport becomes increasingly commercialized. One significant court ruling that recognizes a college athlete as an employee with the same rights as other workers could radically alter the landscape of college sport. Until such a ruling is made, the amateur versus professional debate is likely to continue.
Allen L. Sack
See also College Athletes; Drake Group; Intercollegiate Athletics
Categories: College Sports