Why has amateurism become such a fraught issue?
Ancient concepts of amateurism are a myth. There was no ancient Greek society that celebrated amateurism in the way we’ve popularly conceived it in order to build amateur models in the NCAA and the Olympics. The fear of compensation for athletic performance is without foundation. It was the existence of these rules that provided a broad opening for unscrupulous agents to provide money to “amateur” athletes who needed it and had no other source to seek it from. This is the kind of opportunistic behavior that amateurism has allowed to exist in so many settings, and that is still present in the agents’ business of recruiting athletes. You talk about what you call the “white agent/black athlete dichotomy” in your book. Why is this dynamic so prevalent, and should we be more concerned about it? It’s interesting. That issue has improved dramatically since I first wrote about it two decades ago. As in any other sector of society, I’m sure race is still a factor in some athletes’ agent selecti
