II. Amateurism

Amateurism has been put to several uses in college sports. As football took America by storm in the early 20th century, institutional stakeholders looked to amateurism as an antidote to “cheating,” such as using “ringers” who were often not legitimate students and paying athletes for their athletic abilities.

These discussions intensified in 1905-1906 as stakeholders considered uniform national rules for college sports and the creation of a national governing body.

A critical feature of this debate was whether there was anything morally wrong with a bona fide student accepting money because he was a skilled athlete, particularly students who were not well-off.

Framing the issue through a morality and needs-based lens highlighted the difficulty of applying a British class-based amateur virtue to an American enterprise based on equality of opportunity and merit.

In 1905, Harvard Professor and noted physicist Edwin Hall addressed this tension at a symposium/debate titled “Athletic Professionalism and its Remedies.” Hall made the case that there was nothing “wicked” or “base” in paying a student because of his athletic ability and rejected the “state of mind” that presumed such payments were dishonorable.

Using a morality framework, Hall argued that the true moral “evil” was not from transactions that violated a no-payment rule but from knowing those payments occurred routinely and then lying about it:

“I say that the practice of giving and receiving money might increase somewhat [permitting payment]; but I am confident that the practice of lying and deceiving in all ways regarding such giving would diminish very greatly, and I should be willing to see the amount of that act increased fourfold, if I could diminish to one-quarter the amount of lying about it, which is the main evil.”

Professor Hall lost the debate.

Upon its creation in 1906, the NCAA adopted a zero-tolerance definition of amateurism that channeled British values. At the time, the NCAA lacked enforcement capabilities, and schools were left to their honor to comply with the amateur requirement, another hat tip to the British value system and its “gentleman’s agreements.” (Sack & Staurowsky, 33)

In 1916 and 1922, the NCAA updated its definitions of amateurism, focusing on the motives behind athletic participation:

“An amateur sportsman is one who engages in sport for the physical, mental, or social benefits he derives therefrom, and to whom the sport is nothing more than an avocation [hobby].”

In the modern era (post-1950s), the NCAA’s “Principle of Amateurism” (Principle 2.9) aligned with the 1922 statement at the values level:

“Student-athletes shall be amateurs in an intercollegiate sport, and their participation should be motivated primarily by education and by the physical, mental and social benefits to be derived. Student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation, and student-athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises.” (emphasis added)

In 2022, the NCAA modified its Constitution and deleted Principle 2.9 in favor of a more “modern” articulation (“The Collegiate Student-Athlete Model”): “Student-athletes may not be compensated by a member institution for participating in a sport but may receive educational and other benefits in accordance with guidelines established by their NCAA division.”

The NCAA’s use of amateurism has been at the center of the evolution of the athletic scholarship. The central question in debates over institutional financial aid was whether or how much a school may consider a student’s athletic ability.

In the post-WWII era, there was substantial disagreement on that point. Southern schools wanted to offer scholarships based primarily or substantially on athletic ability, while other schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton believed all prospective students—regardless of athletic ability—should be held to the same admissions standards. (Sack and Staurowsky, 43 - 50)

In 1948, stakeholders adopted a compromise scholarship called the “Sanity Code” that accounted for athletic ability, need, and academic achievement. The scholarship prioritized need and was limited to “tuition for instruction and for stated institutional fees.”

The Sanity Code scholarship also permitted additional benefits such as “medical attention” and in-season meals. The scholarship could not be withdrawn “because of failure to participate in intercollegiate athletics.” Recruiting inducements of any kind were prohibited. (Sack and Staurwosky, 44)

Seven schools, known as the “Seven Sinners” (four from the South) refused to comply with the Sanity Code. At the 1950 NCAA convention, a motion to expel the Seven Sinners failed, effectively marking the death of the Sanity Code.

In 1956 the NCAA capitulated to the full athletic scholarship, which prioritized athletic ability and labor.

Despite the NCAA’s use of the term “grant-in-aid” to suggest an education-based relationship, the full athletic scholarship became outright pay-for-play and has been for almost seventy years.

The movement towards a professionalized model through the debate over the terms of the athletic scholarship coincided with two transformative milestones in college sports in the early 1950s: (1) the mainstreaming of television technology and (2) the NCAA’s hiring of its first full-time CEO, Walter Byers.

Many college sports stakeholders—including many in the NCAA—viewed televised college football as an existential threat to college sports. They believed it would compromise live attendance and gate receipts.

Byers—a savvy businessman—saw televised football as a market opportunity. In the 1951 and 1952 football seasons, the NCAA conducted a televised football experiment and concluded that there would not be an appreciable adverse effect on live attendance.

Byers then aggressively engineered an NCAA monopoly over televised football that lasted for thirty years. Byers convinced members to threaten punishment of any schools—notably the University of Pennsylvania and Notre Dame—that had their own television deals and refused to surrender to the NCAA’s monopoly.

Byers’ stare down of Penn and Notre Dame enhanced the NCAA’s enforcement authority. In 1952, Byers’ reinforced the NCAA’s enforcement jurisdiction through a point-shaving scandal involving the University of Kentucky that resulted in the very first NCAA infractions and enforcement case.

Byers skillfully manipulated the membership to boycott Kentucky the following season unless Kentucky acknowledged wrongdoing and accepted penalties. Ultimately, Kentucky voluntarily accepted a one-year ban.

Through his thirty-six-year reign (1951 – 1987), Byers became the architect of the modern NCAA. He shaped the NCAA’s regulatory authority, business model, and value system.

The Sanity Code debate, the adoption of the full athletics scholarship, the NCAA’s monopoly over televised football, and the NCAA’s acquisition of meaningful infractions and enforcement authority led to one of the most consequential changes in college sports’ value system: amateurism transformed from a moral principle into an economic labor principle.

Byers and the NCAA repurposed amateurism to justify limiting the cost of athlete labor in big-time money sports of football and men’s basketball. In essence, the NCAA fixed labor costs at the value of an athletic scholarship. Any payment from universities above that amount is deemed impermissible “pay for play” and a violation of NCAA amateurism rules.

In 1984, big-time football broke the NCAA’s monopoly over televised football in the Board of Regents antitrust lawsuit. That single event led to an explosion in the value of the overall college sports marketplace.

New broadcast media technologies and outlets (ex., cable TV in the late 1970s and early 1980s) fueled the expansion of college sports markets and led to NFL-like and NBA-like products in football and men’s basketball.

Rather than honestly acknowledge the business realities of the new marketplace and the value of athlete labor, the NCAA and its members indulged the “amateur-professional” paradox by claiming amateurism as a moral principle to the outside world while using amateurism in its regulatory and business model as a labor principle to control the workforce in football and men’s basketball. (Smith, Sports and Freedom, 171)

The NCAA preached that amateurism was necessary to preserve and protect the “integrity” of college sports and to provide a “clear line of demarcation” between college and professional sports.

After his retirement in 1987, Walter Byers wrote a book titled Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes.

(Byers, W., & Hammer, C. 1995. Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes)

Byers’ book is a jarring expose in which he rejects the foundational premises of the business model he had a substantial hand in creating.

Byers summed up the true nature and purpose of amateurism in one sentence:

“Collegiate amateurism is not a moral issue; it is an economic camouflage for monopoly practice.”