College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA's Amateur Myth

Other books talk about the evils of college sports in terms of commercialism and illegal payments. These books focus mainly on the outrageous amounts of money that some college sports generate and how it is corrupting the athletes who participate. This is one of the few books that address the issues of professionalism in college sports. The primary focus of this book is on professionalism and the problems it has caused in college athletics.

According to the authors amateurism began in Great Britain in the early 19th century and centered around the British aristocracy. The traditional definition of amateurism included the belief that it involved an activity that was done in one's spare time, separate from activities that involved making money or a living. The amateur ideal spread to academic universities. It was not long until universities found that they could make money off of these athletic events. In the early 1900's, as universities were defying amateur ideals by finding ways to subsidize athletes as incentives to play for their university, the NCAA came along to play the role of regulator. The authors not only contend, but prove through rulings and behavior of the NCAA that the NCAA never once tried to prevent professionalism from forming in college sports. As a matter of fact, according to the authors the NCAA has not only been unsuccessful in stopping professionalism, but has actually accommodated it.

The authors have quite a few chapters of their book devoted the history of women's sports. These chapters are very important to their argument. They illustrate that women's sports in college began quite differently than men's sports. The women's sports model, as the authors refer to it, strove to separate itself from the money and exploitations associated with men's college sports. This model balanced education and athletics and strove to provide all female students with the opportunity to be involved in athletics. This is what the authors believe that the role of sports should be in universities. Up until very recently, focus in women's sports has remained on the athletes, not the spectators or the revenue being produced by their sport.

The authors spend a whole chapter proving that athletic scholarships have changed from gifts given to students into contracts of employment. This transformation of the athletic scholarship is the very root of the problem that has turned college athletes into professionals. It is in this chapter that the authors do a great job of combining their views and the history of the previous chapters with actual court cases. Although most of these cases deal with the issue of workers compensation for college athletes, they illustrate the transformation of the college athlete from amateur to professional with the introduction of athletic scholarship in the 50's. Awarding financial compensation in the form of scholarships to talented athletes constitutes payment and violates amateur rules. But it was not until 1967 that the NCAA turned these scholarships into employment contracts by allowing athletic scholarships to be canceled by the university, in affect giving the university the power to "fire" an athlete.

What makes this book interesting is that the authors not only talk about the issues and problems with college athletics, but they also offer solutions to the problems they discussed. There are two solutions presented. The first solution presented is for colleges to do away with athletic scholarships and concentrate on educating students. This solution involves bringing college athletics back to the amateur level. This model is successful in Ivy League schools. The second solution offered is to acknowledge that athletes receiving scholarships for their ability are in fact paid professionals and to support these athletes to their fullest potential. In some cases this would involve running the revenue producing sports of a university as an unrelated business, one that has employees and pays taxes.

This book was thorough and very well researched. The authors discussed cases and archival material from the NCAA that I have never seen discussed before. By doing this the authors were able to illustrate their opinions with facts. Although I liked that their opinions were backed up by facts I found this book to be difficult to read at some points. Parts of the book read like a history book, and although the history was very interesting and in some regards necessary to their mission, I would have enjoyed more opinion and less history. Since the authors were involved in college athletics themselves I would have enjoyed reading about some of their experiences. On the other hand, because there was so much history and facts throughout this book I was really able to understand the issues. Overall I enjoyed this book because it explored a side of college athletics that has never been looked at in this kind of detail. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in college athletics.


Amateur Myth of NCAA   February 25, 2000
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

"... a nationwide money-laundering scheme." How Walter Byers, executive director of the NCAA from 1951-1987, described the awarding of athletic scholarships in 1957, which essentially lead to the professionalism of college athletes according to Allen Sack and Ellen Staurowski.

"College Athletes for Hire" is a book that should be read by anyone interested in the NCAA and its place in American sport. The authors of this book, Allen Sack and Ellen Staurowski, have compiled an historical look of college sport from its beginnings as an amateur sport to the highly commercialized spectacle it has become today. Built upon British ideologies of amateurism, college sport quickly grew as universities discovered college sport, moreover college football, to become a revenue producing avenue as well as an avenue for bringing prestige to the universities. As college sport grew, the price of winning brought illegal inducements to athletes and essentially the end of amateurism established in the early days of competition. With the advent of athletic scholarships, the athletes essentially became employees of a university as the scholarship acted as an employment contract where the athletes received free room, board, tuition, and fees for his/her service.

With the rise of professionalism in college sport, especially at the Division I level, the NCAA continued to argue that college sport was still a leisure activity and that college sport still adhered to its original amateur principles. An argument the NCAA continues to use today. This amateur myth has been used not to benefit the athletes in anyway, but to keep the NCAA and its member institutions free from antitrust violations, workers compensation claims, and from paying federal taxes. Sack and Staurowski have put together a well written and well research analysis that can finally help to dispel the notion of the amateur myth and put to light the issues affecting the NCAA, its member institutions, and most importantly, the athletes who help to generate millions in revenue, but fail to reap the benefits of a true higher education.

The book takes the reader on a journey of the NCAA from its inception in 1906, when it was established to restore amateurism, through the rise of women's athletics, the rise in commercialism of college sport as a revenue producing entity, and finally to the issues affecting the athletes themselves. Sack and Staurowski show how athletes have been receiving some sort of payment for their athletic ability and performance on the playing field since the beginning of the NCAA. The so called amateurism of the NCAA created and underground network of illegal payments, which were provided by, boosters, alumni, local residents, and college officials. It was not uncommon for athletes to be given a job and receive payment for which they performed no work at all.

Sack and Staurowski show that the NCAA itself has violated its own long established principles of amateurism with the passage of several amendments. The first of these was the "Sanity Code," which entitled universities to award financial aid based on athletic ability. The second was the granting of full athletic scholarships in 1956, which gave the athletes he aforementioned free room, board, tuition, and fees. Sack and Staurowski argue that these two amendments alone come to violate amateurism and that they constitute payment to athletes for athletic ability and not for education which the NCAA has argued is the basis of the amateur model. Sack and Staurowski further argue that the athletic scholarship is in essence an employment contract. In 1967 the NCAA passed an amendment that reduced the scholarship to a one-year renewable scholarship establishing an employer-employee relationship between the coach and athlete. This one year renewable scholarship now gave the coaches the right to terminate the scholarship if the athlete chose to leave the team to concentrate on academics, if an athlete was injured, if an athlete's athletic ability was not at college level, or for athlete insubordination. Sack and Staurowski argue that this is similar to any employer-employee relationship. This gives the coach total control of the athlete both on and off the field and that an athlete can lose his/her right to an education if the coach deems them unnecessary for athletic competitions. If an athlete loses their right to an education because of sports, how can the NCAA continue to claim college sports are amateur and leisure activities?

Important legal cases are used to show how college sports are similar to professional sports and that the athletes are paid employees. The most important legal case is the Coleman v. Western Michigan University which outlines the difficulties courts have had in deciding these issues arising in college sports. Although the NCAA has won a majority of these cases, Sack and Staurowski provide credible arguments to support the athletes. It is up to the reader to decide whether or not college athletes are in fact paid professional athletes.

Sack and Staurowski argue that the only true amateurism in college sports is at the Division III and the Ivy League where no athletic scholarships are given. Financial aid is given at these institutions based on need rather than the ability to score touchdowns or make baskets. At this level the athletes themselves decide whether or not athletics is more important than his/her education, whereas in Division I and II the athletes are paid entertainers where athletics is their primary goal as dictated by the one-year renewable athletic scholarship.

Although I strongly recommend this book, I must say that it is a somewhat difficult book to read that delves deeply into the issues affecting the NCAA and its athletes. The authors have compiled a scholarly analysis of this subject using diverse sources of information that make this book one of the best in the field of college athletics.