Amateur sports are sports in which participants generally compete without receiving payment for their participation. The distinction is made between amateur sporting participants and professional sporting participants, who are paid for the time they spend competing and training. In many sports which feature professional players, professionals generally compete at a higher level than amateur competitors, although the distinction is not universal. Most people who participate in sports worldwide do so at a non-professional level.
Amateurism was a strongly defended ideal in 19th-century sport, particularly among the upper and middle classes, but it declined during the 20th century as professional sport and commercialisation expanded with the continuing growth of professional sport and the increasing commercialisation of amateur and collegiate sports, and is now retained as a principle by relatively few sports-governing organisations, even though some organisations continue to use the word "amateur" in their names or titles.
Background
Modern organized sports developed in the 19th century, with the United Kingdom and the United States taking the lead. Sporting culture was especially strong in private schools and universities, and the upper and middle-class men who attended those institutions played as amateurs. Opportunities for working classes to participate in sport were restricted by their long six-day work weeks and Sunday Sabbatarianism. In the UK, the Factory Act 1844 gave working men half a day off, making the opportunity to take part in sport more widely available. Working class sportsmen found it hard to play top level sport due to having to turn up for work. On occasion, cash prizes, particularly in individual competitions, could make up the difference; some competitors also wagered on the outcomes of their matches. As professional teams developed, some clubs were willing to make "broken time" payments to players, i.e., to pay top sportsmen to take time off work, and as attendances increased, paying men to concentrate on their sport full-time became feasible. Proponents of the amateur ideal deplored the influence of money and the effect it has on sports. It was claimed that it is in the interest of the professional to receive the highest amount of pay possible per unit of performance, not to perform to the highest standard possible where this does not bring additional benefit.
The middle- and upper-class men who dominated the sporting establishment not only had a theoretical preference for amateurism, but they also had a self-interest in blocking the professionalization of sport, which threatened to make it feasible for the working classes to compete against them with success. Working class sportsmen did not see why they should not be paid to play. Hence, there were competing interests between those who wished sport to be open to all and those who feared that professionalism would destroy the "Corinthian spirit", summed up as "sportsmanship, fair play, [and] playing for the love of the game". This conflict played out over the course of more than one hundred years. Some sports dealt with it relatively easily, such as golf, which decided in the late 19th century to tolerate competition between amateurs and professionals, while others were traumatized by the dilemma, and took generations to fully come to terms with professionalism, even to the result of causing a breakdown in the sport (as in the case of rugby union and rugby league in 1895).
Corinthian Corinthian has come to describe one of the most virtuous of amateur athletes—those who value fairness and honor in competition above victory or gain. The Corinthian Yacht Club (now the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club, RCYC) was established in Essex in 1872 with "encouragement of Amateur Yacht sailing" as its "primary object". To that end, club rules ensured that crews consisted of amateurs, while "no professional or paid hand is allowed to touch the tiller or in any way assist in steering." Although the RCYC website derives the name Corinthian from the Isthmian Games of ancient Corinth, the Oxford English Dictionary derives the noun Corinthian from "the proverbial wealth, luxury, and licentiousness of ancient Corinth", with senses developing from "a wealthy man" (attested in 1577) through "a licentious man" (1697) and "a man of fashion about town" (1819) to "a wealthy amateur of sport who rides his own horses, steers his own yacht, etc" (1823). Dixon Kemp wrote in A Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailing published in 1900, "The term Corinthian half a century ago was commonly applied to the aristocratic patrons of sports, some of which, such as pugilism, are not now the fashion."
The "Corinthian ideal" of the gentleman amateur developed alongside muscular Christianity in late Victorian Britain, and has been analysed as a historical social phenomenon since the later 20th century. The Corinthian Football Club founded in 1882 was the paragon of this. In the United States, "Corinthian" came to be applied in particular to amateur yachtsmen, and remains current as such and in the name of many yacht clubs; including Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club (founded 1874, added "Corinthian" to the name in 1881) and Yale Corinthian Yacht Club (likewise 1881 and 1893).
Present day
By the early 21st century, the Olympic Games and all the major team sports accepted professional competitors. However, there are still some sports which maintain a distinction between amateur and professional status with separate competitive leagues. The most prominent of these are golf and boxing. In particular, only amateur boxers could compete at the Olympics up to 2016.
Problems can arise for amateur sportsmen when sponsors offer to help with an amateur's playing expenses in the hope of striking lucrative endorsement deals with them in case they become professionals at a later date. This practice, dubbed "shamateurism", a portmanteau of sham and amateur, was present as early as in the 19th century. As financial and political stakes in high-level were becoming higher, shamateurism became all the more widespread, reaching its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, when the International Olympic Committee started moving towards acceptance of professional athletes. The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis.
North American collegiate athletics
All North American university sports are (generally) conducted by amateurs. Even the most commercialized college sports, such as NCAA football and basketball, do not financially compensate competitors, although coaches and trainers generally are paid. College football coaches in Texas and other states are often the highest-paid state employees, with some drawing salaries of over five million US dollars annually. Athletic scholarship programs, unlike academic scholarship programs, cannot cover more than the cost of food, housing, tuition, and other university-related expenses.
In order to ensure that the rules are not circumvented, stringent rules restrict gift-giving during the recruitment process as well as during and even after a collegiate athlete's career; college athletes also cannot endorse products, which some may consider a violation of free speech rights. Former NBA player Jerome Williams says, "For years, student-athletes, especially those from minority communities, have been disadvantaged from monetizing their image, or what we call 'player intellectual property.' There's an ongoing revenue stream college athletes are not a part of."
Some have criticized this system as exploitative; prominent university athletics programs are major commercial endeavors, and can easily rake in millions of dollars in profit during a successful season. College athletes spend a great deal of time "working" for the university, and earn nothing from it at the time aside from scholarships sometimes worth tens of thousands of dollars; basketball and football coaches, meanwhile, earn salaries that can compare with those of professional teams' coaches.
Supporters of the system say that college athletes can always make use of the education they earn as students if their athletic career does not pan out, and that allowing universities to pay college athletes would rapidly lead to deterioration of the already-marginal academic focus of college athletics programs. They also point out that athletic scholarships allow many young men and women who would otherwise be unable to afford to go to college, or would not be accepted, to get a quality education. Also, most sports other than football and men's basketball do not generate significant revenue for any school (and such teams are often essentially funded by football, basketball, and donations), so it may not be possible to pay athletes in all sports. Allowing pay in some sports but not others could result in the violation of U.S. laws such as Title IX.
Olympics
Through most of the 20th century the Olympics allowed only amateur athletes to participate and this amateur code was strictly enforced – Jim Thorpe was stripped of track and field medals for having taken expense money for playing baseball in 1912.
Later on, the nations of the Communist Bloc entered teams of Olympians who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis.
Near the end of the 1960s, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) felt their amateur players could no longer be competitive against the Soviet team's full-time athletes and the other constantly improving European teams. They pushed for the ability to use players from professional leagues but met opposition from the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). At the IIHF Congress in 1969, the IIHF decided to allow Canada to use nine non-NHL professional hockey players, Story #17–Protesting amateur rules, Canada leaves international hockey. at the 1970 World Championships in Montreal and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada., Story #40–Finally, Canada to host the World Championship. The decision was reversed in January 1970 after IOC President Avery Brundage said that ice hockey's status as an Olympic sport would be in jeopardy if the change was made. In response, Canada withdrew from all international ice hockey competitions and officials stated that they would not return until "open competition" was instituted. Günther Sabetzki became president of the IIHF in 1975 and helped to resolve the dispute with the CAHA. In 1976, the IIHF agreed to allow "open competition" between all players in the World Championships. However, NHL players were still not allowed to play in the Olympics, because of the unwillingness of the NHL to take a break mid-season and the IOC's amateur-only policy., Story #6–First Canada Cup opens up the hockey world.