I wasn't quite sure of how to headline this, but I saw a commercial for London 2012 and thought of one of the biggest cons in sports - athletic amateurism - and wondered if it this was the greatest crock of shit in athletic history? And this isn't even in reference to college athletes. Nope, this goes at the idea of the Olympics as this pure ideal of athletic endeavor because they were non-professionals. The whole concept was bullshit, but people bought into this for years. There were just a few problems with one major one. 1. It was said to be based on the ancient Greek version, but those athletes sure as hell got paid. There were monetary rewards, betting on events and all kinds of accolades for athletes who won. The idea of amateurism for Olympic athletes would be completely foreign to them. 2. Amateurism was heavily promoted by Avery Brundage, possibly one of the most villainous figures in sports history, in order to run the AAU as his own personal fiefdom and establish his power base among amateur athletics. No bad for a misogynist, racist, Nazi-loving, anti Semite, who treated the 1972 Olympic massacre as a mere nuisance and used his position to deny Jim Thorpe his medals for decades because he was jealous of his own sixth place finish in 1912. 3. The IOC had no trouble ignoring the professional athletes of the communist bloc for decades (again, see Brundage as a main figure). The Soviet Union, East Germany and others classified these athletes as "soldiers", but all they did was train. And, the best reason it was a sham... 4. The whole reason for the denial of professional athletes in the institution of the modern Games in 1896? Rich folks who could afford to play sports without pay didn't want to play with the lower classes. If you were a professional athlete at the end of the 19th century, it was due to the fact that you could only participate in your sport if you received compensation for it. True "gentlemen" , or men of breeding and letters, saw athletics as a sort of hobby and had no interest in competing with the riff-raff. So, they created this noble idea of amateurism and sold it to the public as some kind of virtuous ideal when it really was just classicism. So, remember this sometime during the Summer Games if an idiot journalist starts to wax poetic about the old days where athletes competed for "pureness of sport". It's a crock and always was. In any event, does anyone have some concept or idea in sport that is an even greater, more elaborate and phony concept than this? I think it would be hard to top this one that was so ingrained and generally accepted fact of sport for nearly a century.
Without torturing the word "concept", this one will be tough to beat. I assume you've read the article on the NCAA from The Atlantic?
Without torturing the word "concept", this one will be tough to beat. I assume you've read the article on the NCAA from The Atlantic?
The idea that Roger Goodell actually gives the first damn about the health of the league's players, beyond what is needed to avoid bad press and litigation, is pretty laughable.
Not sure if this what you are getting at Uni, but I hate it when ESPN tries to convince me to care about things I just don't care about, like Brett Farve, or Roger Clemens trial, or the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. They need competition -- good competition -- desperately.
I agree, but I also think it's pretty easy to see through the facade. What makes the Olympic thing so unique to me is that it was something sold andaccepted as truth. It was a lie we all believed, like the belief in the coaching ability of [ddiapos] by those on Volquest and Volnation. The NCAA example above is pretty good, but I could still make an argument the NCAA athletes aren't getting as shitty a deal in their amateurism.
I wonder if the way they get us to believe is the same as the way they get us to overlook the fact that the majority of sports at the Olympics are sports many would never consider watching if they didn't throw a party for them every four years.
I don't think anyone without a vested financial interest in keeping the amateurism myth alive believed a damn thing about the Olympics was pure after '72. The smart folk bailed after '36.
Maybe somewhat, but I still remember the hand wringing prior to the '92 Games about the "infiltration" of professional athletes into the Games and how it could ruin the Olympic ideal. I very clearly remember the Games being considered this essence of purity because the athletes were non-professionals and loved their sport by wide variety of people.
I think the overriding fraud in sports is the notion that sports on tv are anything but a television show. No move is made in the 'best interest of the game', but rather as a means to maintain or gain market share.
