It is my belief that athletes should be allowed to receive financial support in any way that can maximize both their educational and athletic access and success. As noted, there are many ways this is being done in Europe. If we want to continue to have restrictive amateurism rules in educationally based sports in America, then we can. But we can also have a parallel alternative system that would allow athletes to profit from their athletic ability and compete at the highest level during the time in life when they are most able to do so.
It is debatable in the twenty-first century whether lofty ideals of amateurism from the mid-twentieth century have ever been close to being achieved. Many of the same problems that existed during the first hundred years of intercollegiate athletics, such as recruiting improprieties, the changing definition of amateurism, and excess commercialism, are still happening today, but they are more frequent and much more publicized. Despite the stated mission of intercollegiate athletics as being about education first, it is challenging to justify the system in its current state as being an education-first model, as opposed to an athletic-development model. The inherent flaws of the NCAA, and why the system should be modified to a more education-centric model, are examined more closely in later chapters.
INTERSCHOLASTIC SPORTS IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES
During the same period in the twentieth century, public and private school systems began to copy their higher-education counterparts, installing extracurricular activities, specifically sports, outside the existing curriculum but still within the confines of the school. Previously, primary and secondary school students, like college students, had organized clubs to engage in all kinds of activities, including sports, outside school hours as a way to have a needed break from the academic rigor of studying and classes. School officials recognized that some of these extracurricular activities were difficult to control, and many experienced discipline problems. As a consequence, sports clubs were incorporated into the primary and secondary educational systems so that schools could have control over the activities, with one intent being to keep them from conflicting with the educational mission (Pot and van Hilvoorde 2013). Although colleges and universities wanted control of activities in order to prevent injuries, while also gaining the benefits of competition with other schools, having control was also a major reason to not let athletics flourish outside the primary and secondary education systems.
In contrast, school systems in Europe were primarily reserved for academics. Extracurricular activity would take place outside the school doors, allowing for greater integration and participation in sports by members of all socioeconomic classes and academic backgrounds via a community-based club system. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in various European countries it was the student body that established sports clubs outside the schools and independent of school officials, but that is where many of the similarities end. Unlike in the United States, European school officials felt no need to place such student clubs under their supervision, as the students and parents typically cooperated with school authorities and for the most part kept the activities separate and did not let them become a distraction from education. Another and more compelling reason for student clubs, including athletics clubs, not being under the supervision of school authorities is that throughout the bulk of the European education system separate high schools existed and still exist for students of different social and academic classes. This makes populations in most European schools rather homogeneous as compared to the American system, at least in public schools, which in the United States are typically more diverse. Due to this homogeneity, students and parents felt no need or obligation to further associate with the same people from their schools in extracurricular clubs or in interscholastic athletics, but certainly there was a desire to associate, through sports and other activities, with others in their central community whom children might not interact with during the school day (Stokvis 2009).
Like university sports, virtually all youth sports in the United States were integrated within the educational system and have remained, with few exceptions, embedded in this system ever since. Primary and secondary schools in the United States are similar to their university counterparts in that they often have both elite and mass sports facilities on campus and numerous teams that participate in interscholastic competition and tournaments locally, regionally, and even nationally. These interscholastic events are frequently characterized, through their strong emphasis on competition, as effective enhancements to education, and are often very selective in nature. As with colleges and universities, achievements in these interscholastic events are viewed as important for the status and brand identity of both students and schools, even though the effect of this connection is often disputed by empirical research (R. Mandell 1984; Frank 2004; Orszag and Orszag 2005; Orszag and Israel 2009).
Another main reason why competitive sports morphed into the club system rather than being based in schools in countries like the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Sweden, specifically, was a heavy resistance against sports within the educational system by academic officials for its un-pedagogical elements such as competition, selection of athletes, and a strong focus on winning. Many authorities considered competitive sports to be dangerous, unhealthy, or even immoral (van Hilvoorde, Vorstenbosch, and Devisch 2010; Pot and van Hilvoorde 2013). However, this does not mean that some form of school-based sports programming does not exist in Europe. As in the United States, having at least some form of physical education in schools in Europe was intended to compensate for sedentary behavior and promote a healthy lifestyle for students, apart from the pressure of competition sometimes found at certain levels in the sports club system (Stokvis 2009).
In the United States, interscholastic sports are organized in a way similar to colleges and universities in which the best athletes from schools compete against each other. These interscholastic school sports are mostly selective in nature and highly competitive (Park 2007). The competitive characteristic of interscholastic sports is considered important for the social functioning of American schools. For instance, being selected as part of a school team is deemed important for the status of athletes within the school and local community. Conversely, it can be socially and psychologically devastating when one does not make a team or is demoted to a lower level of competition, but this can also provide a teachable moment on how to deal with adversity and challenging situations (Miller 2009). The competitiveness of US educationally based school sports is further illustrated by the rituals and symbols that surround interscholastic matches. As in intercollegiate athletics, these rituals and traditions run deep. Things like intense rivalries, mascots, bonfires, and championship playoffs, while smaller in scale, are just as intense and popular. These rituals, traditions, and symbols at both the high school and intercollegiate level can serve to enhance competitiveness and the importance of beating the opponent, not just for the competitors, but also for the students and other stakeholders such as parents and alumni (Stokvis 2009).
While sports competitiveness is important in almost any culture, it is often amplified in the United States because sports within the education system form a separate social sphere in which competition and rivalry are more accepted (Pot and Van Hilvoorde 2013; Curry and Weiss 1989). The social network that interscholastic and intercollegiate sports can provide in the United States is present instead in the European club system, and is perhaps even farther-ranging. In Europe, the desire for competitiveness and socialization is mainly fulfilled in the sports