College football has experienced significant changes in recent years, notably with the introduction of NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) contracts allowing athletes to be paid. The NCAA’s recent lawsuit settlement may lead to universities directly paying athletes by 2025. The transformation suggests that athletes could be deemed employees within the next few years, altering the landscape of college sports. This shift challenges the traditional notion of amateurism, which is rooted in the idea that athletes participate for the love of the game, not for monetary gain.
The term “amateur” originates from the Latin word “amator,” meaning lover, reflecting the ideal that college athletes play for passion rather than profit. This concept of amateurism ties back to Victorian England and the ethos of muscular Christianity, which emphasized physical activity as essential for character building. Promoted by figures like Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School, muscular Christianity linked sports with moral and physical development, aligning with British nationalism and the maintenance of the British Empire.
Muscular Christianity’s influence extended to the United States post-Civil War, coinciding with America’s concern over maintaining national vigor. Caspar Whitney, a key proponent of amateurism, imported these ideals from Britain. Whitney’s writings in Harper’s Weekly in the 1890s helped cement the division between amateurism and professionalism in American sports, emphasizing that true amateurs play for sport, not financial reward.
The amateurism model, however, was not without its contradictions. As college football gained popularity and financial significance, institutions found ways to indirectly compensate athletes, blurring the lines between amateurism and professionalism. For instance, in the late 1800s, football expenses at schools like Harvard and Yale were substantial, revealing the sport’s growing business aspect.
The NCAA, formed in 1905 to regulate college sports, further entrenched amateurism by establishing eligibility rules and inventing the concept of the “student-athlete” in the 1950s. This designation aimed to prevent athletes from being classified as employees, thereby avoiding workplace regulations and compensation claims.
Despite these efforts, instances of indirect payments and benefits persisted. Notably, Pop Warner, a prominent coach, secretly compensated his players in the early 1900s, acknowledging their contributions to the team’s success. Such practices underscored the ongoing tension between maintaining amateur ideals and addressing the financial realities of college sports.
Had the NCAA adopted a revenue-sharing model with athletes early on, many of the scandals involving illegal benefits might have been avoided. Coaches’ salaries and lavish facilities might not have escalated as dramatically, and athletes could have been better supported. Although full-time professionalism for college athletes was unlikely in the early 20th century, the potential for a different path remains a topic of speculation and debate.
Today’s changes in college football, driven by a reevaluation of amateurism, prompt reflection on its historical roots. Understanding that amateurism was initially a way to preserve the dominance of the upper classes over the working class adds context to the ongoing evolution of college sports. This historical perspective invites fans to reconsider their views on the current and future state of college football.
I’m Jon Johnston, and this is Hardcore College Football History. Thank you for watching.
Books for Reference:
The Real All Americans – Sally Jenkins
https://amzn.to/4d0A28Q
John Sayles Watterson’s College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy
https://amzn.to/4cfd3WE
A Global History of How the Worlds Football Codes Were Born by Tony Collins
https://amzn.to/46uAKcf
A Brief History of the Olympic Games – David C Young
https://amzn.to/3ytlO19
Please consider supporting me through Patreon:
https://patreon.com/hardcorecollegefootballhistory
21 Comments
Great historical and interesting and very well produced video, so pertinent to the chaos going on in college football today.
Great video! This channel should have a million subscribers man!
The bottom line is, and this is true in all sports that only rich people can afford to be amateurs.
I agree that college football and college basketball player should be considered employees but they should not get scholarships.
They can get paid by the university and if they want to pay to go to school, fine. Maybe offer an employee discount.
And also the transfer portal needs to be changed a.athlete can use it once, but to use it a second time or more means they have to sit out a year.
It is getting ridiculous with some athletes playing for three different schools. They have more free agency rights than professional athletes. Or I should say major league athletes.
Just because the term came up, here's a famous quote:
"Soccer is hockey at the speed of golf." –Me
We will wind up with a football team that hopes to have a university that it can be proud of.
Most excellent presentation! Great work!! One thing that was prominent in my lifetime (60's onward) was that the athletes were paid. The scholarship and the opportunity for education was the salary. I still believe this is a valid point, but the titanic amounts of money involved have made it a fart in a hurricane.
Great job getting those cost/revenue numbers for Harvard in 1890's! Fascinating.
I don't believe colleges and universities should be fielding athletic teams and charging admission or selling broadcast rights. Club sports, whether associated with colleges or not, seem to be an option worth looking at. Unfortunately, this train has gone beyond that station.
Your presentations focus on deep history. You questioned what may be different if we shed amateurism at a mid-century date. There are many critics of the NCAA that posit if they had been willing to change and evolve in 2000-2010 this whole mess could have been avoided. They took an all-or-nothing stance. If they had codified, regulated and expanded revenue sharing over the last 25 years, they would still be in control.
I started making all kinds of notes for what would have amounted a philosophical treatise on this, touching on many different disciplines. I'll finished it but it'll be way too long for a YouTube comment.
Instead, I'll just note my primary personal complaint: I care about loyalty. Pay athletes, no problem. But I'm tired of rooting for uniforms instead of people.
This is why I don't like free agency in professional sports any more than I like the transfer portal in CFB. Yes, I understand players doing the best they can for themselves and in principle I have no problem with that, but being a member of a team used to mean something.
I'm doing a lousy job of explaining this but, for example, there was Bart Starr on the Packers for his whole career vs OBJ whose team this week I don't even know (and next week it won't matter that this week I don't know cuz he'll be on another team, that I won't know either). What I do know is that OBJ doesn't give a damn whether or not the team he plays for wins games.
This makes me sad.
Yes, a lot of things might have happened, but what they add up to is that there wouldn't continue to be much reason for spectator sports to be associated with schools if the participants were making a considerable amount of money from it. So you wouldn't've had those scandals because the competitors would've become independent of the institutions. Making the football team attend school, in the case of a money-making team, would be the equivalent of a pro league handicapped by a requirement that all their players do farm work or engage in military service during the season.
Great video! As a former benchwarmer on a Division III baseball team in the 1980s, I have some thoughts.
First, I think there remains a place for pure amateurism in college sports, and I am very glad I had the opportunity I did. I learned a lot from my experience, developed a deeper love for baseball, and know that I was playing with guys that loved the game and generally knew that they weren't going pro.
Second, one of my best friends at college played on the football team (and is now in the school's hall of fame). He was a great running back. He told me years later that he had hopes of going pro. I know that another player on the team, an offensive lineman, was rumored to have had pro scouts come to watch him. So I know that, even in Division III, the prospect of being paid in the future to play was something on some athletes' minds.
Third, it's rather silly to say that someone is a pure amateur who is getting a scholarship to play a sport. Those athletes have been paid with both the free education and the prospects of future pro contracts.
Fourth, it's even sillier to say that the athletes at big-time college programs don't deserve to a get a cut of the business revenue that they generate for the schools.
Fifth, I am not sure, however, that we shouldn't stop a little short of seeing athletes as pure employees, like professors or janitors, because I feel like the chance of an education should remain important. I feel like some of the compensation should be delayed until after athletes have completed school. But I also feel like the arbitrary restrictions on things like meals should be eased quite a bit. An athlete that helps bring in revenue for a school should not have to worry about meals in the off season even if he is the 3rd string right guard.
A very well researched video, which YT needs more of…. Regarding Caspar Whitney’s statement, “There are no degrees in amateurism” — sounds like he’s talking about academic standards of modern one-and-done college sports programs.
I got into touch rugby late in my 20s, and I love the game. To research, learn, and see what the upper social classes in England did to Rugby League influences my view that the players should be paid and paid well for what they do. If a poet can be a literary student AND write and get paid while they study, why not the athlete generating income FOR the institute they study for?
Rich people muddy up a lot of things they don't want to lose control over, don't they?
I understand its linguistic rationale, but I laughed my ass off every time I heard, "Muscular Christianity." 😄
Thanks for this video. I thought it was well-organized and presented information that few know about.
Appreciate your talent and hard work on your channels.
Awesome video. I am one of those that believe NIL as it exist today certainly endangers college football. I however feel like players should be paid. The NCAA to some degree needs to start looking more like the NFL and less like the MLB. Although Northwestern in the past on a consistent basis has not been able to complete with Ohio State or Michigan with NIL the way it is today they'd never be able to complete even for a short stretch like they could in the mid to late 90s. Whether you're a TCU or Texas alum your school should be able to play on an even playing field in terms of the rules both on the field and off. Coming up with a revenue sharing template for college sports will be a nightmare, even the factions like sports, conferences, states etc, however doing nothing will most certainly destroy college football as we know it.
There was also the fear of antitrust litigation.
In the 1950s, after the Supreme Court decided in International Boxing that sports organizations could be held liable under antitrust laws (something that was contrary to the majority opinion of lawyers of the day), maintaining amateurism was an important part of the NCAA avoiding these laws to maintain its monopoly on TV distribution.
They eventually lost this anyway in Oklahoma v NCAA, but the dissent of Justice White (former NCAA running back himself at Colorado) touches on some of their thinking there. They lost, but two Supreme Court justices at least agreed with parts of their argument that amateurism was sufficient to sidestep antitrust.
Even if the early NCAA had allowed some form of payment to players, schools with larger, and more financially well-off alumni and fan-bases, would have still had the advantage. The arms race that began in the mid-teens would have been even more intense. The most likely consequence is that the creation/growth of the NFL is sped up as interest in the sport becomes more universal, and less classist.
I thought a college football scholarship meant you got a college education for playing football.
What a great video . good job as always