5 ms·

For more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe#Controversy

by btown 4y ago

kurthr 4y ago
It's interesting to me that playing any sport for tiny amounts of money would disqualify you (well after any petition was required to be filed) from competing in any Olympic sport. The way the rule was enforced by Sullivan does seem to raise issues of fairness, but even the rule it self seemed to be designed to reject honest people of lower classes. By those strict rules playing a game of darts or pool for a quarter even after you finished competing should result in the removal of medals. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/07/20/why-did-the-olympics-ditch-their-amateur-athlete-requirement https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/07/20/...
- elliekelly 4y ago
  Is this all that different from the way the NCAA rules about payment have been (and perhaps, still are) unevenly interpreted and applied?
  - kurthr 4y ago
    NCAA doesn't say that playing darts when you're 67 disqualifies you from college bowl wins at 20. That is, however, how the Olympic rules were read. Collecting any money from any competitive sport at any time disqualified all earlier or later achievements. Oh, actually, it would also be all player's who's coaches were paid (because that also wasn't allowed) so I guess every NCAA player would be disqualified?
- acomjean 4y ago
  It used to disqualify US college athletes too. They can't make money on their College fame (that is changing..). But its weird. I was at UMass (University of Massachusetts) when they had a NCAA tournament class team. For UMass the transgressions of their star player cost the school their victories and revenue... "However, NCAA sanctions stripped the Minutemen of their 1996 NCAA Tournament victories. The sanctions, based on star Marcus Camby admitting he took money, clothes, and jewelry from an agent during the season, removed the Final Four from the record books. Additionally, 45% of tournament revenue had to be returned to the NCAA. Camby reimbursed the school for the $151,617 in lost revenue." [1] Basketball (or football) vs other non-revenue sports are a weird thing at a state school that had revenue shortfalls. The most highly paid state employees are often these coaches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMass_Minutemen_basketball#John_Calipari_era_1988–1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMass_Minutemen_basketball#Joh...
  - dghlsakjg 4y ago
    WTF! He had to pay the school for their lost revenue? I never realized just how accurate the Cartman as slave owner episode was.
    - hooloovoo_zoo 4y ago
      I don't think he was forced to; he signed an $8M contract that same year. Here's some more detail https://vault.si.com/vault/1997/09/15/tangled-web-marcus-camby-was-both-victim-and-villain-in-his-illicit-dealings-with-agents-while-at-umass#:~:text=To%20his%20credit%20Camby%20has%20repaid%20that%20money%20to%20the%20school.%20%22I%20felt%0AI%20owed%20them%20that%20much%2C%22%20he%20says https://vault.si.com/vault/1997/09/15/tangled-web-marcus-cam....
      - dghlsakjg 4y ago
        A young person from a disadvantaged background pays back an institution worth billions for “lost revenue”. How many times did the school sell out the arena with his name on the top of the player list? Umass lost nothing for having recruited him. He paid that money back because of media and social pressure, not an overriding sense of right and wrong. I don’t know many 20 year olds, of any background, that would turn down $100k of under the table benefits. If the NCAA thinks it’s wrong, they should go after the corrupting influences, not the poor kid.
        acomjean 4y ago
        To be fair it was a pretty broke state university. Although it did build a new basketball/hockey arena at the time. Also basketball games for students were free (and about half of the seats were reserved for them). Amherst were the university is is quite far from any cities. I imagine it helped the university financially but it's a weird system UMass has. I photographed the team back then for the college paper..(I have signed photograph of him dunking I took) After the basketball program catered. As an alumni I think it's for the best. University sports are great till they turn into money making afairs. but the article makes clear he was making a huge amount in the NBA and was trying to be fair.
- samatman 4y ago
  The spirit of amateur athleticism was a noble one, which I mean both as praise and critique. There was a real distinction, no different in spirit than that between junior sports and adult sports. Class privilege was a real thing, sure, and the Jim Thorpe story in fact shows that, by custom, a poor boy could earn some extra money playing in the minors under an assumed name, which Thorpe just didn't know due to his background. Today, being an amateur tennis player means you've had thousands of hours of professional coaching, there aren't really exceptions, although there's enough charity that exceptionally talented players do get that coaching sometimes. Back then, it meant you played tennis. This is already long so I'll refrain from talking about the wacky and fake rules around NCAA amateur status; I'll content myself with saying that more change is needed.
77pt77 4y ago
> receiving meager pay; reportedly as little as US$2 ($58 today) per game and as much as US$35 ($1,018 today) per week Not a lot, but 4K a month is not exactly meager.
- jfengel 4y ago
  Except that it only applies during the baseball season. And that top figure would apply to only a few weeks of that season. It wouldn't be possible to make $48k a year out of it -- probably no more than a quarter of that. That's pretty meager. At the very least you'd need a job in the off-season, and it would have to be a job you could drop during the season.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Lot a lot, but 4K a month is not exactly meager. For further context, $1,018/wk is just below the $1,037/wk median income of full time workers in the US today.
  - kurthr 4y ago
    Except that it's a part time job without benefits, you can't hold it full time by definition. It's like being a ski bum for 3-4 months.
baxtr 4y ago
Thorpe's parents were both of mixed-race ancestry. His father, Hiram Thorpe, had an Irish father and a Sac and Fox Indian mother. His mother, Charlotte Vieux, had a French father and a Potawatomi mother, a descendant of Chief Louis Vieux. Thorpe was raised as a Sac and Fox, and his native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, is translated as "path lit by great flash of lightning" or, more simply, "Bright Path". As was the custom for Sac and Fox, he was named for something occurring around the time of his birth, in this case the light brightening the path to the cabin where he was born. Just wow.
slg 4y ago
>receiving meager pay; reportedly as little as US$2 ($58 today) per game It is both interesting and frustrating to note how little those salaries have increased over time. That inflation adjusted number of $58 per game that is described as "meager pay" would exceed the minimum of $290 per week for MLB affiliated minor league players as of 2020. After pressure, MLB recently raised it to $400 which works out to $67 a game if we assume 6 games a week. Still well below minimum wage if we consider the actual time investment that these people make. This is all because of the antitrust exemption that the Supreme Court granted MLB in 1922 which has yet to be overturned. Since then, there has been one carve out for the antitrust exemption for major league players, which is why they make millions and minor league players still make that same "meager pay". It is a good lesson in the power of antitrust regulations and collective bargaining.
- OJFord 4y ago
  I'm not in the US and don't follow baseball, so I don't know, but it sounds to me more like a reflection of people 'caring about'/following/paying for the major league disproportionately more than minor ones? I don't think it's unusual in sports to have relatively little ground between amateur and superstar. Sort of also makes sense (if you think massive 'superstar' salaries are a given) in that the best are generally going to be quite young, highly talented players; so it's not like you have a long career progression's worth of salaries from 30k to 30M to work through.
  - slg 4y ago
    Yes, people care more about the major leagues than the minors, but people are still paying to see minor league baseball and it still makes money. Also practically every player in the majors was at one point in the minors, usually for 3+ years for even the best players. I'm also not suggesting that minor league players need to make millions, but there was literally an act of Congress passed a few years ago to allow these people to be paid below minimum wage[1]. How is that in any way fair? It is abusive monopolistic behavior and I don't think there is much validity to any argument otherwise. [1] - https://apnews.com/article/minor-league-baseball-lawsuits-ap-top-news-government-spending-laws-cb183f59e88948e8b9cd49ad07bde807 https://apnews.com/article/minor-league-baseball-lawsuits-ap...

For more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe#Controversy

by btown 4y ago

For more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe#Controversy

kurthr 4y ago

It's interesting to me that playing any sport for tiny amounts of money would disqualify you (well after any petition was required to be filed) from competing in any Olympic sport. The way the rule was enforced by Sullivan does seem to raise issues of fairness, but even the rule it self seemed to be designed to reject honest people of lower classes. By those strict rules playing a game of darts or pool for a quarter even after you finished competing should result in the removal of medals. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/07/20/why-did-the-olympics-ditch-their-amateur-athlete-requirement https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/07/20/...

elliekelly 4y ago
Is this all that different from the way the NCAA rules about payment have been (and perhaps, still are) unevenly interpreted and applied?
- kurthr 4y ago
  NCAA doesn't say that playing darts when you're 67 disqualifies you from college bowl wins at 20. That is, however, how the Olympic rules were read. Collecting any money from any competitive sport at any time disqualified all earlier or later achievements. Oh, actually, it would also be all player's who's coaches were paid (because that also wasn't allowed) so I guess every NCAA player would be disqualified?
acomjean 4y ago
It used to disqualify US college athletes too. They can't make money on their College fame (that is changing..). But its weird. I was at UMass (University of Massachusetts) when they had a NCAA tournament class team. For UMass the transgressions of their star player cost the school their victories and revenue... "However, NCAA sanctions stripped the Minutemen of their 1996 NCAA Tournament victories. The sanctions, based on star Marcus Camby admitting he took money, clothes, and jewelry from an agent during the season, removed the Final Four from the record books. Additionally, 45% of tournament revenue had to be returned to the NCAA. Camby reimbursed the school for the $151,617 in lost revenue." [1] Basketball (or football) vs other non-revenue sports are a weird thing at a state school that had revenue shortfalls. The most highly paid state employees are often these coaches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMass_Minutemen_basketball#John_Calipari_era_1988–1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMass_Minutemen_basketball#Joh...
- dghlsakjg 4y ago
  WTF! He had to pay the school for their lost revenue? I never realized just how accurate the Cartman as slave owner episode was.
  - hooloovoo_zoo 4y ago
    I don't think he was forced to; he signed an $8M contract that same year. Here's some more detail https://vault.si.com/vault/1997/09/15/tangled-web-marcus-camby-was-both-victim-and-villain-in-his-illicit-dealings-with-agents-while-at-umass#:~:text=To%20his%20credit%20Camby%20has%20repaid%20that%20money%20to%20the%20school.%20%22I%20felt%0AI%20owed%20them%20that%20much%2C%22%20he%20says https://vault.si.com/vault/1997/09/15/tangled-web-marcus-cam....
    - dghlsakjg 4y ago
      A young person from a disadvantaged background pays back an institution worth billions for “lost revenue”. How many times did the school sell out the arena with his name on the top of the player list? Umass lost nothing for having recruited him. He paid that money back because of media and social pressure, not an overriding sense of right and wrong. I don’t know many 20 year olds, of any background, that would turn down $100k of under the table benefits. If the NCAA thinks it’s wrong, they should go after the corrupting influences, not the poor kid.
      - acomjean 4y ago
        To be fair it was a pretty broke state university. Although it did build a new basketball/hockey arena at the time. Also basketball games for students were free (and about half of the seats were reserved for them). Amherst were the university is is quite far from any cities. I imagine it helped the university financially but it's a weird system UMass has. I photographed the team back then for the college paper..(I have signed photograph of him dunking I took) After the basketball program catered. As an alumni I think it's for the best. University sports are great till they turn into money making afairs. but the article makes clear he was making a huge amount in the NBA and was trying to be fair.
samatman 4y ago
The spirit of amateur athleticism was a noble one, which I mean both as praise and critique. There was a real distinction, no different in spirit than that between junior sports and adult sports. Class privilege was a real thing, sure, and the Jim Thorpe story in fact shows that, by custom, a poor boy could earn some extra money playing in the minors under an assumed name, which Thorpe just didn't know due to his background. Today, being an amateur tennis player means you've had thousands of hours of professional coaching, there aren't really exceptions, although there's enough charity that exceptionally talented players do get that coaching sometimes. Back then, it meant you played tennis. This is already long so I'll refrain from talking about the wacky and fake rules around NCAA amateur status; I'll content myself with saying that more change is needed.

77pt77 4y ago

> receiving meager pay; reportedly as little as US$2 ($58 today) per game and as much as US$35 ($1,018 today) per week Not a lot, but 4K a month is not exactly meager.

jfengel 4y ago
Except that it only applies during the baseball season. And that top figure would apply to only a few weeks of that season. It wouldn't be possible to make $48k a year out of it -- probably no more than a quarter of that. That's pretty meager. At the very least you'd need a job in the off-season, and it would have to be a job you could drop during the season.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Lot a lot, but 4K a month is not exactly meager. For further context, $1,018/wk is just below the $1,037/wk median income of full time workers in the US today.
- kurthr 4y ago
  Except that it's a part time job without benefits, you can't hold it full time by definition. It's like being a ski bum for 3-4 months.

baxtr 4y ago

Thorpe's parents were both of mixed-race ancestry. His father, Hiram Thorpe, had an Irish father and a Sac and Fox Indian mother. His mother, Charlotte Vieux, had a French father and a Potawatomi mother, a descendant of Chief Louis Vieux. Thorpe was raised as a Sac and Fox, and his native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, is translated as "path lit by great flash of lightning" or, more simply, "Bright Path". As was the custom for Sac and Fox, he was named for something occurring around the time of his birth, in this case the light brightening the path to the cabin where he was born. Just wow.

slg 4y ago

>receiving meager pay; reportedly as little as US$2 ($58 today) per game It is both interesting and frustrating to note how little those salaries have increased over time. That inflation adjusted number of $58 per game that is described as "meager pay" would exceed the minimum of $290 per week for MLB affiliated minor league players as of 2020. After pressure, MLB recently raised it to $400 which works out to $67 a game if we assume 6 games a week. Still well below minimum wage if we consider the actual time investment that these people make. This is all because of the antitrust exemption that the Supreme Court granted MLB in 1922 which has yet to be overturned. Since then, there has been one carve out for the antitrust exemption for major league players, which is why they make millions and minor league players still make that same "meager pay". It is a good lesson in the power of antitrust regulations and collective bargaining.

OJFord 4y ago
I'm not in the US and don't follow baseball, so I don't know, but it sounds to me more like a reflection of people 'caring about'/following/paying for the major league disproportionately more than minor ones? I don't think it's unusual in sports to have relatively little ground between amateur and superstar. Sort of also makes sense (if you think massive 'superstar' salaries are a given) in that the best are generally going to be quite young, highly talented players; so it's not like you have a long career progression's worth of salaries from 30k to 30M to work through.
- slg 4y ago
  Yes, people care more about the major leagues than the minors, but people are still paying to see minor league baseball and it still makes money. Also practically every player in the majors was at one point in the minors, usually for 3+ years for even the best players. I'm also not suggesting that minor league players need to make millions, but there was literally an act of Congress passed a few years ago to allow these people to be paid below minimum wage[1]. How is that in any way fair? It is abusive monopolistic behavior and I don't think there is much validity to any argument otherwise. [1] - https://apnews.com/article/minor-league-baseball-lawsuits-ap-top-news-government-spending-laws-cb183f59e88948e8b9cd49ad07bde807 https://apnews.com/article/minor-league-baseball-lawsuits-ap...