The Myth of the Amateur

The research [in The Myth of the Amateur] reveals a mind that has been exploring this subject for a long time. By the time he gets to more contemporary matters, such as college athletes’ battle to be compensated for use of their likenesses, the author has covered an impressive stretch of time and topics. A long, winding road of sport and money supported by thorough research. Kirkus

Rarely is a book published that so comprehensively documents, clearly explains, and coincides perfectly with the very latest state of affairs within a particular American institution. Fortunately for readers, this book is one of them...While certainly contributing an exhaustive historico-philosophical treatise of college sport and its administration for over 150 years, Smith's offering is so much more: a well-told tale of the long and enduring struggle between labor and management. Recent court rulings regarding compensation of college athletes for their names, images, and likenesses wonderfully incorporate, illustrate, and reinforce the author's arguments, and perhaps signal labor's victory over management—at least for now. This is a must-read text for sociologists, historians, philosophers, and labor studies scholars who focus on the institution of sport. CHOICE

A definitive look at American colleges’ fraught history of paying athletes to play sports...In bringing the narrative up to the present, Smith amply documents the hypocrisy in the insistence that college players should be considered amateurs, and that academic standards were not compromised to accommodate sports...Smith’s exhaustive research paints a disturbing picture of entrenched corrupt practices. Those interested in both education and sports will be enlightened, if dismayed. Publishers Weekly

Smith provides a comprehensive history of how college athletes have been compensated, the different forms of that compensation, and the role amateurism has played in the legislating of compensation...this book provides a good chronicle of the history of college athletics in the United States and specifically the cyclical nature of college athletics administrators’ attempts at fitting various forms of amateurism into what has always been a commercial enterprise...The Myth of the Amateur can serve as a great resource for both undergraduate or graduate courses on intercollegiate athletics, sport in society, or sport history. Journal of Sport Management

It is difficult to imagine how one could read this book and still believe that amateurism is a coherent, ethical, or practical idea today...For those interested in the ongoing debate about paying college athletes and how the ideas about amateurism in the United States have evolved over the last century and a half, one could hardly find a better book to read than the Myth of an Amateur. FanSided

Smith exhibits mastery of the wonderful heritage and rich hypocrisy associated with the history of college sports...Smith is a preeminent historian of American college sports, and The Myth of the Amateur should be an immediate read for any serious study of the topic. Journal of Sport History

This book is a skillful compendium of college athletics' hypocrisies and exploitative behaviors, particularly useful for sports historians and those interested in athlete rights...Smith proves that amateurism never really existed—and that only by changing the term's definition could the NCAA cling to any vague ideal along those lines. In doing so, he provides a more realistic understanding of college sports' history that will enable a better engagement with the present and the future. Journal of American History

The Myth of the Amateur offers a detailed, provocative, forceful, and timely reminder that the debates that swirl around the ideals and conduct of college athletics today have an important history. Journal of Arizona History

In this book, Ronald A. Smith convincingly argues that those affiliated with the leadership of college sports have insisted for more than a hundred years, with an increasing amount of mental gymnastics, willful blindness, and, in some instances, outright lies, that such sports are amateur and must remain so to retain their essential meaning, appeal, and educational value. Grounded in an unassailable trove of archival evidence and secondary material, The Myth of the Amateur should do away, once and for all, with the charade that college athletes and the sports they play somehow need to be protected from the market. Kurt Edward Kemper

Too many Americans think collegiate sports are for amateurs only, or that professionalism is a recent phenomenon. Yet Ronald A. Smith, who has researched this topic for decades and knows the history of US intercollegiate athletics better than anyone else, exposes the stark reality that athletic purity was never truly the case. He takes readers on a fascinating tour ranging from Harvard’s nineteenth-century training tables for rowers to the NCAA’s invention of the term 'student-athlete' in the 1950s; from the Kellmeyer case that cleared the way for women’s athletic scholarships in the Title IX era to the O’Bannon case that challenged the NCAA’s usage of non-compensated images of athletes. Anyone who cares about the past and future of college sports should read this book. Brian M. Ingrassia

The Myth of the Amateur is an essential contribution to our understanding of the long and tortured history of the NCAA’s efforts to permit its member schools to avoid compensating their athletes through a wage-fixing cartel, while permitting Division I basketball and football schools to reap the ever-increasing amounts of revenue generated by those athletes. Ronald A. Smith carefully documents these efforts, as well as the increasing public and judicial awareness of the fact that the NCAA, like the famous emperor before, ‘has no clothes’ when it seeks to hide behind the facade of ‘amateurism’ to disguise its exploitation of these athletes, who are required to put their teams before their studies. As the public and judicial debate over the future of the NCAA rules continues, this is must reading for all those concerned about the fair and just treatment of the players who make these college sports so popular and profitable through the sweat of their labors and their extraordinary athletic skills. Jeffrey L. Kessler