We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2010
The rewards to the successful in professional sport, and equally the failure to obtain them, can tempt participants to go beyond the violence and dispossession sanctioned by the rules. Thus many late nineteenth-century commentators feared that, unless it was strictly controlled, sports professionalism would inevitably lead to corruption and misconduct:
It is not good that a game should be made a matter of money. Evil passions are excited; the temptation to unfairness is increased; rowdyism comes in.
As soon as any sport has become so popular that money is to be made out of it, and men engage in it upon whom the loss of reputation has little effect, it may be prophesied with certainty that abuses will arise.
Experience shows that whenever, in any sport, an entrance has been opened for making money without amateur supervision, the element of corruptibility is sure to step in, with disastrous effects.
The history of prizefighting was testimony to what could happen to a sport if professionalism got out of hand. Increasingly from the 1820s on, fights became unpredictable - not, however, due to closeness of competition, which might have been acceptable, but because of corruption, which was not. Despite the pretensions of the Pugilistic Club, the sport had no real ruling body and no steps were taken to rectify the situation.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
