The Myth of the Amateur: A History of College Athletic Scholarships

Sports historian Smith (Wounded Lions) takes a definitive look at American colleges’ fraught history of paying athletes to play sports. The origins of pay to play, Smith writes, can be traced to the first American intercollegiate contest in 1852, when a rowing match between Harvard and Yale became an all-expenses-paid vacation in exchange for competitors’ participation. In bringing the narrative up to the present, Smith amply documents the hypocrisy in the insistence that college players should be considered amateurs, and that academic standards were not compromised to accommodate sports. Not only have American colleges splashed out huge sums to hire professional coaches—some of whom are the “highest paid” officials at their institutions today—they’ve also perpetuated the “amateur-professional dilemma” by providing athletes “academic tutoring, giving free meals at a training table, and offering athletic scholarships.” In the 1980s, even the hallowed Ivy League succumbed to the imperative to win, when Columbia accepted “academically unqualified football players” in order to recover from “the embarrassment of continual losing.” Smith has no illusions that pressure on colleges will ever lead to meaningful reform. While the level of detail may verge on overkill for those with a cursory interest, Smith’s exhaustive research paints a disturbing picture of entrenched corrupt practices. Those interested in both education and sports will be enlightened, if dismayed. (May)