Thorpe: Professional Athlete

Cathy Freemen is an Australian athlete. Her sport that she did was sprint and her medal record are 7 gold, 2 silvers and 1 bronze in the career. She became the Olympic champion for the women's 400 m at the 2000 Summer Olympics, at which she lit the Olympic Flame. She was selected to represent Australia at the 1990 World Junior Championships in Athletics in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, she entered the semi-finals of the 100 m and was placed fifth in the finals of the 400 m. Cathy Freeman’s greatest influence on her career are her parents, she influenced Australian sport by becoming the first female Australian Aboriginal to win a gold medal at an international athletics event. She a fearless promoter of her Aboriginal culture,

Byers wrote he did so in 1964 after two state courts ruled in separate cases that scholarship students injured or killed in the course of their athletic duties were actually university “employees” due workers’ compensation. “[The NCAA] dreaded [the] notion that NCAA athletes could be identified as employees by state industrial commissions and the courts,” Byers stated. “We crafted the term student-athlete, and soon it was embedded in all NCAA rules and interpretations as a mandated substitute for such words as players and athletes.”

Although there were many greats in the 1920s, without a doubt, George "Babe" Ruth was the first and most famous out of all the heroes presented in this time. Ruth changed the whole game of baseball. Ruth was traded to the Yankees from the Red Sox on January 3, 1920 for $125,000. This was more than double the highest price paid for a player. The country had just come out of war, and the basic morale was low. Sports however, lightened the spirits

Secondly, there is a major difference between professional sports and college sports. “Students are not professional athletes who are paid salaries and incentives for a career in sports. They are students receiving access to a college education through their participation in sports...student athletes are amateurs who choose to participate in intercollegiate athletics as part of their educational experience, thus maintaining a distinction between student athletes who participate in the collegiate model and professional athletes who are also students” (Mitchell). The collegiate athletes’ incentive is the access to an outstanding education. College athletes playing a college sport is not a career or a profession. “The NCAA plays a critical role in the maintenance of a revered tradition of amateurism in college sports”(Ross). This quote is laudable because

One of the biggest challenges paying college athletes is the legal power of the term student-athlete. When President Roosevelt created the NCAA to protect young athletes, he also emphasized that the NCAA would “serve a secondary purpose in ensuring ―no student shall represent a college or university in any intercollegiate game . .

Not only do the players play hard for the school, but they also have the potential to earn money through commercial signings and endorsements by third party sponsors. The NCAA should lift the “Principle of Amateurism” and establish a newer one that resembles the one of the Olympics. The Olympics’ amateur model resembles the NCAA’s “Principle of Amateurism” except for the fact that they do not have restrictions on commercial opportunities such as

In Buck O’Neil’s book, I Was Right on Time, he mentions a phrase that was common for Negro League ball players to hear back in the day. O’Neil writes, “John McGraw said he’d give 50,000 dollars for Donaldson if he’d been white…we heard that a lot about a lot of players through the years” (O’Neil 78). But unfortunately for many of the ballplayers at that time, they weren’t white. And as a result of their skin color and the Jim Crow laws of the time, African American, including ballplayers like Buck O’Neil, had to endure troubling times and unjust hardships. On the surface, I Was Right on Time is a memoir, a story about O’Neil’s time spent navigating through black baseball and his stories of some of the greatest to play the game, but underneath the tales of a great American sport, is a great American travesty; a real look into the days of segregation and the harshness of racial problems in 20th century America.

Before Jackie Robinson came around, only white people were aloud to play major league baseball. Baseball was very segregated at this time. If one

I. (C)The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) defines amateurism as, “The conviction that people should participate in sports as a hobby (for the fun of it) rather than for money.” The NCAA mandates that all college athletes maintain this level of amateurism while in college, however, college sports have never been more of a

For a long time, it was assumed that blacks were not allowed to play in the Major Leagues simply because they had not for so long. When Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of baseball at the time, declared that there was no rule preventing integration of the Major Leagues, the idea of an African-American joining the league was realized for the first time by a

Milner reports that none of the eight players were found guilty (267). Because they were innocent, they did not serve time in jail (Ward 143). Rosenberg declares that all players were forbidden from playing organized baseball forever (71). Although they could not play, “Jackson played semi-pro baseball under assumed names,” which was his way of obeying the sentence (Milner 268). Many people felt that the baseball industry needed a leadership change after the consequences were distributed to the players. Owners of the baseball teams decided to designate a new judge to oversee baseball games. The owners felt they needed to make a monumental change so the owners got rid of the three man commission that had previously watched over the baseball games (Ward 143). Rosenberg says, “Landis was given the title of commissioner of baseball with a salary of $50,000 a year. More power was put into his hands then any other baseball man ever had” (71). Landis was in charge of watching over all of the baseball games. By changing the commissioners of the game, a new era of baseball was developed. The scandal marked a crucial point in baseball's history and introduced a new age of cleaner baseball. No scandal had shocked the public as much as the Black Sox scandal did during that time period (Rosenberg 71). Milner says, after the fix, gambling scandals decreased substantially during organized baseball .Landis ruled baseball with an iron fist which led decreased gambling scandals (268). A new era of baseball came from the Black Sox Scandal and baseball was known for Babe Ruth’s hitting skills then for scandals involving baseball and gambling (“Black Sox Scandal” 67). There were many positive changes that came from the Black Sox Scandal including a new commissioner and a new era

Jackie Robinsons dedication to sports paid off, the owner of the Kansas City Monarchs Wrote back to him offering him to play with the team and receive 400 dollars a month. Jackie played really well with this team putting up really good stats. Although he was playing well there was frustration with the league, it was very unorganized and unpredictable. He left his frustrations behind in hopes to become a player in the major league. Jackie headed to multiple Negro player tryouts but no one ended up getting signed, and those teams who held them ended up being some of the last to sign an African American

In the interim, in 1915, he had sorted out the Bulldogs, an expert football club from Canton, Ohio. After a progression of exceptional seasons with the Bulldogs and different groups he resigned from football in 1929. Thorpe thusly had a couple of little parts as an on-screen character in movies, addressed on Native American culture, and served as a sailor in the U.S. Shipper Marine amid World War II. In 1950 about 400 American sportswriters and telecasters chose Thorpe as the best all-around competitor and football player of the primary portion of the twentieth century. He was chosen to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963.

There were separate teams for black players because they were not allowed to play on white professional teams. In the late 1800s, professional African American players played on all-black teams such as the Cuban Giants. But some baseball managers and owners of Major League teams wanted to hire African Americans. In order to get around the rules, they listed some black players as Hispanic or Native American. Baseball remained an independent sport well into the 1940s. In 1945, a talented young player named Jackie Robinson joined the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro American League. He would become baseball's "great

There has been amplified debate on the treatment, education, training of the college athlete. To avoid exploitation of athletes, “The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), formed in 1905, set bylaws requiring college student-athletes to be amateurs in order to be eligible for intercollegiate athletics competition” (Schneider n.p.). Intercollegiate athletics have dramatically changed over the last several decades. Currently, intercollegiate athletics generate tremendous amounts of revenue, remarkably in football and basketball. College sports in America is a