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In professional sports, as opposed to amateur sports, athletes receive payment for their performance. While men have competed as professional athletes throughout much of modern history, only recently has it become common for Women to have the opportunity to become professional athletes. Professional athleticism has come to the fore through a combination of developments. Mass Media and increased Leisure have brought larger audiences, so that sports organizations or Team s can command large incomes. As a result, more Sportspeople can afford to make athleticism their primary career, devoting the training time necessary to increase skill, physical condition and experience to modern levels of achievement. This proficiency has also helped boost the popularity of sports. Andy Miah '' Sport & the Extreme Spectacle: Technological Dependence and Human Limits '' (PDF) Unpublished manuscript, 1998 Most sports played professionally also have amateur players far outnumbering the professionals. Professional athleticism is seen by some as a contradiction of the central ethos of Sport , Competition performed for its own sake and pure enjoyment, rather than as a means of earning a living. Consequently, many organisations and commentators have resisted the growth of professional athleticism, saying that it has impeded the development of sport. For example, Rugby Union was for many years a part-time sport engaged in by amateurs, and English Cricket has allegedly suffered in quality because of a "non-professional" approach. HISTORY The 19th century English class system and professional players The English , Winchester , England The International Olympic Committee (IOC) invited a representative of the Headmasters' Conference (HC, the association of Headmaster s of the English public schools) to attend their early meetings. The Headmasters' Conference chose the Reverend Robert Laffan , the headmaster of Cheltenham College , as their representative to the IOC meetings. He was made a Member of the IOC in 1897 and, following the first visit of the IOC to London in 1904, he was central to the founding of the British Olympic Association a year later.Steve Baily '' The Reverend Robert S. de Courcy Laffan: Baron Pierre de Coubertin and the Olympic Movement '' The EPS subscribed to the © 2003. Within this Class view it follows that if a person played a sport as a paid "professional", that would make the person a member of a trade. How could a club function when expectations demanded that some of the players enter through a side entrance? How would the social side of the club flourish if some of the members did not rank as gentlemen? How could a club of gentlemen which played a club of professionals possibly entertain their social inferiors? Another prejudice which existed amongst late Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen held that the all-round abilities of British gentlemen allegedly meant that, if they put their minds to something, they would perform better than anyone else. This included the other British classes. The British attempts under officers must do better than "other ranks" on the Commando Course to qualify for a Green Beret .) If professional teams were to beat gentlemen amateur teams consistently, that might burst the illusion of social superiority, and that could lead to social instability, something not in the perceived interests of the British Upper Class es of the time. Olympic Games Until the late 20th century the Olympic Games nominally only accepted amateur athletes. However, successful Olympians from Western countries often had endorsement contracts from Sponsors . Complex rules involving the payment of the athlete's earnings into trust funds rather than directly to the athletes themselves, were developed in an attempt to work around this issue, but the intellectual evasion involved was considered embarrassing to the Olympic movement and the key Olympic sports by some. In the same era, the nations of the Communist Bloc entered teams of Olympians who were all nominally Student s or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full time basis. In 1982 Adidas was paying British Olympic athletes to wear their gear. The main person involved in the scandal was Horst Dassler . The first Olympics to officially accept professional athletes was 1988 in selected sports and 1992 in the remainder. LISTS OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTS See Also: List of professional sports leagues List of North American cities by number of pro-sports franchises Australian rules football See Also: Australian rules football Football Unlike other sports, Australian Rules football has not resisted becoming a professional sport. Although the sport began as amateur competition, the Australian Football League is an elite professional league and has been for nearly 80 years since its initial formation as the Victorian Football Association and then the Victorian Football League in 1897. The league changed its name to the Australian Football League (AFL) in 1990 amid the increasing professionalism and national expansion of the game. The increasing popularity and membership of clubs saw players being paid large sums until a Salary Cap and National Draft system was put in place by the league during the 1980s to keep clubs competitive in a national competition. Some Australian state leagues, particularly South Australia ( SANFL ), Victoria ( VFL ) and Western Australia ( WAFL ) pay players professional wages. Leagues in other States are often only Semi-professional . Auto racing See Also: Auto racing Baseball See Also: Baseball See Also: Major League Baseball See Also: Minor League Baseball Basketball See Also: Basketball See Also: National Basketball Association Invented in the 1890s in was founded by the owners of major sports arenas, particularly the Madison Square Garden . The BAA later merged with the NBL in 1949 to become the National Basketball Association , the preeminent league in the world with 29 teams in the United States and one in Canada. = Leagues outside of the United States In the last several decades, professional basketball has become truly international. There are now leagues in a large number of countries, among them:
Billiards See Also: Cue sport Bowling See Also: Bowling See Also: Professional Bowlers Association Cricket See Also: Amateur and professional cricketers See Also: World Series Cricket Cycling See Also: Cycling Football (soccer) The governing body of UK Football is The Football Association (FA), founded for men in 1863 and including women beginning in 1969 (See History Of Football ). In its early years football was mainly played on amateur basis. This was to change with the inauguration of the FA Cup competition in 1871. To do well in the competition clubs started to compete with each other to attract the best players. The players would be offered financial inducements to play. For example "boot money" was a term where cash (typically a half crown (12-and-a-half pence)) was placed in players boots after a game. The payment of inducements was possible because a successful team could be expected to generate considerable income for a club from tickets sold to supporters to watch matches. Although inducements were paid they were not direct payments because initially the FA was completely opposed to professionalism, as personified by Corinthians F.C. By the mid 1880s this position was no longer tenable and professionalism was legalised in 1885. In 1888 thanks to the introduction of professionalism a new format for competition between the clubs was possible and The Football League was introduced to help further the commercialisation of football. In 1904 the FA introduced maximum wage in 1904 to try to reduce competition between clubs. Maximum wages would last until the 1960s with players negotiating collectively through the Player's Union . There was also a complicated transfer system for players in England, which was challenged by George Eastham who won a ruling in the English High Court (Eastham 1963: 146) which ruled that the transfer system was "''an unreasonable restraint of trade''". In the 1977/1978 season 'freedom of contract' between players and clubs was introduced. This allowed players playing for English teams to negotiate wages close to their real market values. It also introduced the players agent as an important figure into English football to represent the interests of players. In December 1995 the to scrap the remaining restrictions on the ability of players and clubs to negotiate contracts with the each other. However UEFA is working with FIFA to try to find ways to re-introduce restrictions to help clubs and the sport of football in third word countries. On Thursday 21 April , 2005 UEFA's 52 member federations unanimously approved a rule designed to increase the number of locally trained players. UEFA's chief executive Lars-Christer Olsson was reported by CNN to have said that some of the major clubs in Europe like Chelsea F.C. and FC Barcelona were not happy with this rule and he didn't rule out the possibility of a court challenge.
Football (American/Canadian) Rugby Football in Canada had its origins in the early 1860s, and over time, a unique code of football known as Canadian Football developed. Both the Canadian Football League (CFL), the sport's top professional league, and Football Canada , the governing body for amateur play, trace their roots to 1882 and the founding of the Canadian Rugby Football Union (later reorganized as the Canadian Rugby Union). In 1909, the Grey Cup was donated by the then Governor General Of Canada Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey , to recognize the top amateur rugby football team in Canada. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the two senior leagues of the CRU (the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union and the Western Interprovincial Football Union ) gradually evolved from amateur to professional leagues, and found they had less and less in common with the amateur leagues, and consequently in 1956 formed a new umbrella organization, the Canadian Football Council. In 1958, the CFC left the CRU altogether and was renamed the Canadian Football League. By this time, teams from the amateur Ontario Rugby Football Union had stopped challenging for the Grey Cup, and ever since, it has been exclusively awarded to CFL teams. Since 1965, University teams have competed for the Vanier Cup .1 Golf See Also: golf See Also: Professional golf tours Ice hockey Ice Hockey is played on ice with a three inch (76.2 mm) diameter rubber disc called a puck between two teams of skaters consisting of a goaltender, two defence players and three forwards. The game is played all over North America, Europe and in many other countries around the world to a greater or lesser extent. It is played with two teams, while 5 skaters and 1 goalie are allowed on the ice at a time. In NHL rules, the periods are 20 minutes long.There are three periods. The 64-member governing body is the International Ice Hockey Federation, (IIHF). Ice hockey has been played at the Winter Olympics since 1924, and was in the 1920 Summer Olympics. North America's National Hockey League is the strongest professional ice hockey league, drawing top ice hockey players from around the globe. The NHL rules are slightly different from those used in olympic hockey. Ice hockey sticks are long L-shaped sticks made of wood, graphite, or composites with a blade at the bottom that can lie flat on the playing surface when the stick is held upright and can curve either way as to help a left- or right-handed player gain an advantage. There are early representations and reports of hockey-type games being played on ice in the Netherlands, and reports from Canada from the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the modern game was initially organized by students at McGill University, Montreal in 1875 and, by two years later, codified the first set of ice hockey rules and organized the first teams. Rugby football See Also: History of rugby league History of rugby union Football In 1893 , Yorkshire Rugby Football clubs complained that southern (gentlemen) clubs enjoyed over-representation on the RFU Committee and that committee meetings took place in London at times which made it difficult for northern members to attend. By implication they argued that this affected the RFU's decisions on the issue of "broken time" payments to the detriment of northern clubs who at the time made up the majority of English rugby clubs. ("Broken time" payments involved a proposal put forward by Yorkshire clubs that players receive a payment of six shillings when they missed work due to match commitments.) When the RFU voted down "broken time" payments, widespread suspensions of northern clubs and players began. On August 29 , 1895 representatives of the northern clubs met in the George Hotel, Huddersfield to form the "Northern Rugby Football Union" (usually termed Northern Union or NU), a professional body which played an "open" code of rugby which became known as Rugby League . The dispute about payment also affected soccer and cricket at the time. Each game had to work out a compromise; Rugby proved the most successful at maintaining its amateur ethos. Over a century would elapse before Rugby Union became an "open" code and would allow players who had played a game of Rugby League (even at an Amateur level) to play in a Union game. Tennis See Also: Tennis See Also: Association of Tennis Professionals Women's Tennis Association Video games See Also: Electronic sports See Also: Championship Gaming Series REFERENCES SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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