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A comment on The million-dollar hustle changing US sport. Parent comment

Re:The million-dollar hustle changing US sport by kristjansson on Friday September 08, 2023 @01:58PM (#37437059)
The amateur tradition in football was, at one point, strong enough that professional football was viewed as grubby and second class.

I'm sure that commissioner, like any reasonable person calling for a return to those traditions, is also calling for the abolition of the NFL, all volunteer coaches, and gratis, advertising-free broadcasts of all the games, right? Right?!

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Re:The million-dollar hustle changing US sport by diracs_stache on Friday September 08, 2023 @02:21PM (#37437343)
Agreed, there was a long time when the olympics were for amateurs only.
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Re:The million-dollar hustle changing US sport by LanceH on Friday September 08, 2023 @02:30PM (#37437485)
> olympics were for amateurs only

For varying degrees of "amateur". A lot of nations employed their athletes to do nothing but train for the olympic and international competition.

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Re:The million-dollar hustle changing US sport by houseinthesky on Friday September 08, 2023 @02:53PM (#37437794)
That's actually why the amateur requirement was dropped.

The Soviet Union and other government-controlled-economy nations were sending essentially professional athletes to the Olympics while free-economy nations were sending amateurs. Removing the restriction allowed all nations to send their best athletes.

Ironically of course, there are some aristocratic motivations for why "amateur" was desirable in the first place that don't really align to modern sensibilities, but that's separate.

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