Sadankata

Once upon a time, in a world long gone, it used to be that there was a clear distinction between an amateur [insert an occupation] and a professional. I'm using “occupation” here literally, as in something that occupies someone. Examples are banker, hair stylist, back scratcher and shoe shiner.

The difference was almost always clear. An amateur shoe shiner is one who is smitten by shining shoes, and is continuously refining their buffing technique and trying different buff clothes and doing other things that matter in shoe shining to become better at it. They are good enough that it’s clear they’re not your average Paul shining their work shoes, and may even get requests from family and friends specifically for these services. They don’t mind, really, because they enjoy shining shoes and each new shoe they shine is an opportunity for them to become better at it. The difference between them and a professional shoe shiner is that for the professional, this is their main gig. They live off of the shoes they shine. They may love shining shoes, but it’s not required that they do. They just need to do it well enough that their customers pay them. In fact, they could have started out loving it but have become jaded by unreasonable customer requests over the years and how much (or little) they make and do it now only because they have no other skill. In essence, in these before times, this was the difference. An amateur did something because they loved doing it, or because they love who they’re doing it for and have other things that they do for money. An amateur is someone for whom the occupation is a hobby, and is good at said hobby. A professional does this for one main purpose – to make a living, and the love is a nice add-on.

Even in these before times, amateurs sometimes got material benefits from their activities. A boxer who represents their country in the Olympics and wins a medal may get national awards, gifts from well wishers and patrons that they would not have gotten had they not partaken in that activity. This didn’t take them out of the amateur class; they did it for the love of the sport and went back to their life afterwards. The gifts and awards were great to have, but they would do it again even without them.

In today’s times, the lines have blurred very much, and it is harder to tell if someone is an amateur or not. What does it matter anyway? Some competitions do not allow professionals, an example is boxing at the Olympics, for different reasons. Regardless of the reasons, it’s harder to make the distinction. You must not have done this professionally to qualify What does this even mean? What if I’m a boxing influencer with a large social media following that I’ve parlayed into brand deals with makers of boxing gear? And this has given me the resources to hire professional trainers and spar with pros? Can I still qualify as an amateur? What if I participated in an unofficial match with UFC fighter for my social media channel? Am I still an amateur? This hasn’t happened yet, but it will happen and I’ll love to follow it when it does.

One thing about Amerika (not a typo) is that they are always on the edge of what is possible. If there’s a “what if”, there’s an American somewhere trying it out to see if it works. This amateur/professional debate has come to a head there in college sports. There has been a lot written about it – here is one summary – and in essence it says colleges are allowed to pay their student athletes unlimited amounts of money. The specific amount depends on the negotiating position between both parties; how much the school wants the player, how good the player is, how much the coach believes they fit into her system and so on. It was a landmark deal, and much was said about it.

In the before times I talked about earlier, college sports was clearly amateur, and professional sports had actual league: NBA, NFL and so on. College athletes were students who happened to be good at a sport, and so they represented their schools. Along the way, they hopefully learn some transferable skills: hard work, perseverance, mental strength to recover from defeat that they can apply to their careers after school. As time went on, it became more important for colleges to win so they gave students offers: We see you’re a great badminton player. How about you come to our college and play for us. We’ll like to be badminton champions in our state and turn our noses at our neighboring college who have trounced us for four decades now. We’ll make it worth your while. We’ll waive tuition for you, and we’ll add room and board. You won’t need those pesky campus jobs that students get to make ends meet. You’ll get to play badminton, which you love doing, and you’ll get a free degree while at it.

This was a good deal for a long time. Until some sports (mainly football and basketball) started making the schools a lot of money. It turns out that students loved it when their schools won games, and would show up to matches to cheer them on. They paid for tickets, which paid for all the Gatorade and equipment the teams needed. And as those students graduated and went on to make money, they didn’t lose their love for their schools. They followed the schools’ performances, and were willing to pay to watch them. A Duke University alum who now works in San Francisco can maybe travel back to North Carolina once a year to catch a game. But they would happily pay a fraction of the travel costs to watch the game on TV. This is the main source of the broadcast TV money that poured into popular collegiate sports. There are other reasons of course – the “amateur” image it had, where these were just kids putting in work for the love of the game and their school, without the money drama that abound in the pro leagues.

This money, that grew into billions of dollars a year by the 2020s is why the lawsuit that led to the settlement happened. Athletes argued (rightfully) they were doing physical work – training, playing, getting injured while the money went to the coaches and school administrators. It must feel bad to create value and get back only a fraction of what you create; awfully close to indenture.

Now that the amateur/professional separation has been fully erased in American college (male) football and basketball, why do we have the college league anyway? In a simple way, we have multiple professional leagues now: the NCAA, the NBA and NFL and the difference seems to be that the NCAA requires that an athlete be a “student” at a college while the NBA/NFL do not. But let’s be real, if a star student isn’t attending classes and doesn’t show up for an exam, will they get cut from the team? If the ECON 203 finals clashes with a game against their chief rivals, will the school ask the student to not attend the game? If their GPA goes so low as to warrant being asked to leave an academic program, will they really get kicked out? I feel like if I’m being paid $3 million a year to play football for a college, that is no longer a hobby. It’s not my main gig. I’m now a football player who happens to have a student ID.

What does this portend? I don’t know. The most fun version of the future for me is that college football and basketball keeps growing until they are hampered by the “athlete must be a student” rule, and the schools all band together to eliminate it and just go full pro. Then the teams are subsidiaries of the colleges and the league fully rivals the NFL and NBA, and eventually they merge. Then the schools realize that they need activities to teach their young students character, and someone says “you know, sports will be a good idea”. Then the schools restart the sports at the amateur starting line.

What’s life if not full circle? I really hope this future comes to pass so I can brag about how I foresaw it. Otherwise, it may still make for a good book/movie story. You heard it here first.