Amateur sports

[1] Sporting culture was especially strong in private schools and universities, and the upper and middle-class men who attended those institutions played as amateurs.

In the UK, the Factories Act 1844 gave working men half a day off, making the opportunity to take part in sport more widely available.

[4] 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.

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.

"[8] 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.

[11] 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 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.

Even the most commercialized college sports, such as NCAA football and basketball, do not financially compensate competitors, although coaches and trainers generally are paid.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

[18] 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.

[21] Canadian hockey official Alan Eagleson stated that the rule was only applied to the NHL and that professionally contracted players in European leagues were still considered amateurs.

On English overseas tours, some of which in the 19th century were arranged and led by professional cricketer-promoters such as James Lillywhite, Alfred Shaw and Arthur Shrewsbury, a more pragmatic approach generally prevailed.

Before the Partition of India some professionalism developed, but talented cricketers were often employed by wealthy princely or corporate patrons and thus retained a notional amateur status.

A number of skaters, including Brian Boitano, Katarina Witt, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, and Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, took advantage of the reinstatement rule to compete at the 1994 Winter Olympics.

Rugby has provided one of the most visible and lasting examples of the tension between amateurism and professionalism during the development of nationally organised sports in Britain in the late-19th century.

[citation needed] Rugby football, despite its origins in the privileged English public schools, was a popular game throughout England by around 1880, including in the large working-class areas of the industrial north.

Certain teams faced with these circumstances wanted to pay so-called 'broken time' money to their players to compensate them for missing paid work due to their playing commitments, but this contravened the amateur policy of the Rugby Football Union (RFU).

The NRFU initially adopted established RFU rules for the game itself, but soon introduced a number of changes, most obviously a switch from 15 to 13 players per side.

These comprehensive and enduring sanctions, combined with the very localised nature of most rugby competition, meant that most northern clubs had little practical alternative but to affiliate with the NRFU in the first few years of its existence.

Rugby football in Britain therefore became subject to a de facto schism along regional - and to some extent class - lines, reflecting the historical origins of the split.

The Campeonato Argentino, the national championship for provincial teams, does not include players contracted to the country's Super Rugby side, the Jaguares.

As numbers of young people became alienated from social norms, they resisted and looked for alternative recreational activities, including that of throwing a Frisbee.

[36] What started with a few players, in the sixties, like Victor Malafronte, Z Weyand and Ken Westerfield experimenting with new ways of throwing and catching a Frisbee, later would become known as playing freestyle.

In the 1970s it developed as an organized sport with the creation of the Ultimate Players Association with Dan Roddick, Tom Kennedy and Irv Kalb.

[47] The National Center for Educational Statistics reports that student athletes have a 20% higher chance of completing a college degree, and are more likely to be employed and in better health than non-athletes.

They have been a presence in Formula One for many years - drivers such as Felipe Nasr, Esteban Gutiérrez and Rio Haryanto bring sponsorship to the tune of $30 million for a seat, even in backmarker teams.

The vast majority of these "gentlemen drivers" however tend to participate at club level, often racing historic or classic cars, which are aimed primarily at amateurs.