Softball will be in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo

[chapmaja]

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.

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).