Quote:
Originally Posted by Dakota
While I tend to agree, plenty of USA athletes back in the day were about as "amateur" as Power 5 Conference football players are "students".
And, taking this to the extreme, those Soviet-bloc athletes were, in fact, professional athletes in every sense of the word being employed by the state (e.g. Soviet Army) as full-time athletes.
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I complete agree. The days of Amateur Athletes ended decades ago. Even before the Cold War, soldiers were a primary source of Olympic Athletes.
Track and Field athletes were getting appearance fees for decades, but much of that money was put into a "retirement fund" with the only allowable deductions being used for training and "basic" living expenses. This started after the issues in 1932 when a famous runner was barred from the Olympics because he collected appearance fees despite the protests of his competitors (who he regularly beat handily).