I am doing a presentation in my Sports Management class at
UMass. My topic is Amateurism and Professionalization. However, I am having a hard time finding information on the history of Amateurism. I would greatly appreciate any information you may
have, or direct me to a site on the web, or some other source.
--Sean
A starting point might be my article on amateurism in The
Encyclopedia of North American Sports History (Facts on File,
1992). I don't know of a book-length work on the subject, but
Ronald Smith has quite a bit to say about it, here and there, in
his Sports & Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (OUP, 1988). Another more general source that addresses the issue is Allen Guttmann's From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports (Columbia Univ. Press, 1978).
An excellent article that may, however, be hard to find is James
W. Keating's "The Heart of the Problem of Amateurism" in the
Journal of General Education, Jan. 1965, pp. 261-272.
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I need to know how ticket prices for sports events have changed through the years.
--Gwen
I don't know of any book about ticket prices. There are a couple
of magazines that might help, but you'd have to have access to a
really good library to get them, I think.
I can tell you about Super Bowl ticket prices. At the first
Super Bowl, in 1967, a ticket cost $12. That went up to $15 in
1970, to $20 in 1975, to $30 in 1978, to $40 in 1980, to $60 in
1983, to $75 in 1985, and to $100 in 1987. This (1997) year the price was $275. (I don't know what they were in between 1987 and
1997.)
Money Magazine every April does a study about what it costs to take a family to a major-league game, at each park. That
includes price of four tickets, parking, hot dogs, sodas, and so
forth, but you can find the ticket price in the list. They
started doing that about 1985, I think, so if you can find a copy
of the April issue for each year, it would tell you
something.
There's another magazine that's even harder to get. It's called
Amusement Business, and it's a weekly magazine about sports, movies, and other kinds of entertainment. It lists ticket prices for every team in every sport a while before the beginning of the season. The baseball prices, for example, are usually in about the middle of February. Again, though, you'd have to go through a lot of back issues.
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How many years were the Empire Games held and in what years? When did the games change to the commenwelth games? Were there any years in World War II the games weren't held?
--Paul from Australia
The idea that grew into the present Commonwealth Games came from
Sir Astley Cooper, who in 1891 proposed a "Pan-Brittanic-Pan-Anglican Contest and Festival," patterned after the ancient Olympics, to be held every four years. Nothing came of the idea until 1911, when the Inter-Empire Championships were held as part of a festival honoring the coronation of King George V.
There were plans to stage such games every four years, but World
War I wiped out the idea. It was revived in 1928 by M. M.
"Bobby" Robinson, the manager of the Canadian Olympic track team.
He presided over a meeting at which the British Empire Games were
created. The first games were held in 1930 in Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada. London, England, hosted the games in 1934 and Sydney,
Australia, in 1938.
There was then another hiatus because of WWII. The renamed
British Empire and Commonwealth Games were hosted by Auckland,
New Zealand, in 1950. Other sites were Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada, in 1954, Cardiff, Wales, in 1958, and Perth,
Australia, in 1962.
The name was changed to the British Commonwealth Games in 1966,
when the site was Kingston, Jamaica. Edinburgh, Scotland hosted
the games in 1970. The final name change, to the Commonwealth
Games, took place in 1974. The sites since then have been:
Christchurch, New Zealand, 1974; Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 1978; Brisbane, Australia, 1982; Edinburgh, Scotland, 1986; Auckland,
New Zealand, 1990; and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 1994.
The next Commonwealth Games will be held in 1998. I don't know
the site.
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Who was the first to have organized public games? The Greeks or Romans or some other civilization?
--W.W.
The answer to your question depends on how you define "organized
public games." There's evidence that the ancient Chinese and the
ancient Egyptians had sports, of a sort, but they were really
pastimes for royalty or nobility, for the most part. I would say
that the Greek Olympics (and similar festivals such as the Nemean
Games) were the first truly organized public games. They were
definitely organized as to time and place and they also provided
seating for spectators. The first recorded Olympic Games took
place in 776 B.C., but they had undoubtedly begun before that.
The Roman games were of a somewhat different nature. Aside from
the chariot races, which were truly competitive events staged for
a largely upper-class audience, the Roman games were gladiatorial
spectacles that emphasized, not competition in any meaningful
sense of the term, but blood and gore. The gladiators, of
course, were slaves who were trained solely for the purpose of
dying in the arena for the delight of spectators. Even "boxing"
was, for the Romans, usually a fight to the death.
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Can you tell me what sparked the type of "mass-entertainment frenzy" experienced in America in the early 1900's (1900-1920). What specifically were the social, economic and political concerns that allowed for the construction of huge stadiums where thousands of people could go to watch a sporting event? Was it more a product of the "wage slave" mentality or the simple fact that people had more money and time? Also, which were the first stadiums to be built and who funded them?
--Anonymous
You ask a very large question which could bring a very large
answer--a book-length answer, in fact--but obviously my answer
has to be somewhat limited in scope and length. Rather than
addressing mass entertainment in general, let me focus on
baseball, since sports is my field and baseball was by far the
most popular spectator sport during that period.
Probably the biggest factor involved was the urbanization of
America during the late 19th century, combined with enormous
population growth. Between 1860 and 1900, the population grew
from 31 million to 76 million, and the urban population increased
from about 6 million to more than 20 million. By 1900, about 15%
of the U. S. population was concentrated in just 19 cities,
thirteen of which had major-league teams beginning in 1901 (when
the American League achieved major-league status).
Urbanization and industrialization also created a society in
which commercialized sports (and other types of mass
entertainment) could flourish. The instantaneous transmission of
news by telegraph and the growth of the mass circulation
newspaper were among the important factors here. A baseball fan
in New York, for example, could not only watch his team play
while at home, he could follow its fortunes on the road through
the newspapers. Baseball players and other entertainers became
known nationwide, largely because of the press.
During this period, baseball games were probably too expensive
for most "working men," although they might be able to see a few
games now and then. (The major-league ticket price was fixed at
50 cents, which was a pretty good sum in those days.) However,
business and commerce in the bigger cities created a large urban
middle class of men who did have a reasonable amount of
discretionary income and leisure time. The (rather scanty)
evidence indicates that this class made up the largest proportion
of baseball attendees. Games usually began at 4 p.m., and
members of this middle-class group were likely to get out of work
at 3. The starting time seems to have been set for their
convenience.
The earliest baseball parks were nothing more than wooden
grandstands and fences surrounding a field. Seating capacity was
limited. For important games, such as the World Series, an area
of the outfield, near the fence, was opened to spectators, who
were confined behind a rope barrier.
The first genuinely modern stadium for baseball was
Philadelphia's Shibe Park, which opened in 1909. It was the
first concrete and steel stadium, double-decked, with a seating
capacity of about 20,000. Ben Shibe was the majority owner of
the team (the Athletics, now in Oakland) and the park was named
for him because he was also the major investor.
Other similar parks followed in the next several years: Forbes
Field in Pittsburgh (later in 1909), the Polo Grounds in New York
(1911), Ebbets Field in Brooklyn (1913). Yankee Stadium, which
of course is still in use after many renovations, opened in 1923;
it had a capacity of 65,000, which was the largest in major
league baseball for many years. (Until 1923, the Yankees were
tenants of the Giants in the Polo Grounds.)
These parks were all financed and built by the baseball teams
themselves. In some other cities, though--Cleveland and St.
Louis come to mind--baseball parks were at least partly financed
by streetcar companies and they were located on streetcar routes.
This is a rather quick summary to a complicated question, I know.
You might want to consult the book, Sports Spectators, by Allen Guttmann, which analyzes economic and psychological factors involved in fandom. (It covers a lot of ground, from ancient Greece to modern times.) The book Total Baseball has an excellent section on baseball stadiums, past and present.
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I'm writing a paper on the effects of media on sports. Can you suggest any sources of information?
--Marie
There's good news and bad news.
The bad news is that, so far as I know, there aren't many good
sources for what you're looking for. The good news is, that
leaves a lot of room for original research(?!?)
My Encyclopedia of North American Sports History contains entries on Journalism, Radio, and Television, and they were difficult to do. I used a number of books on the various media and gleaned bits of information from them. That was six or seven years ago, but I don't know of anything new that's been published in the
area since then.
I will offer some suggestions and hope they're of some help.
A good starting point, if you haven't read it already, may be
Allen Guttman's Sports Spectators (Columbia U. Press, 1986). He covers the role of spectators from ancient Greece on and doesn't have a great deal to say (that I can recall) about the modern media, but just checking his references and bibliography may give you some pretty good leads.
I don't have the reference in front of me, but Erik Barnouw wrote
an excellent history of radio, at least 2 volumes, maybe more,
from Oxford U. Press. There's a lot to glean there. There has
been quite a lot written about sports and TV, but it tends to
focus on the money aspects or the behind-the-scenes stuff. But
take a look at: Benjamin G. Rader, In Its Own Image: How
Television has Transformed Sport (Free Press, 1984); David A.
Klatell & Norman Marcus, Sports for Sale: Television, Money, and the Fans (OUP, 1988) and Ron Powers, Super Tube (Coward-McCann, 1984).
A pretty good, though quirky, sportswriter's view of TV and
sports is William O. Johnson Jr.'s Super Spectator and the Electronic Lilliputians (Little Brown, 1971). Top of Page
A friend of mine at Cancun in Mexico is a tour guide at the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza. He believes that the Pok-A-Pok court there is one of the oldest sports stadiums in the world dedicated to a single sport, being built around 600 A.D. and would like to put this in context with sports world wide.
I know that in England towards the end of the 12th century King
John banned the playing of football as it interfered with
archery practice so football must be older than that. It is also
recorded that monks played an early form of cricket around the
10th century, but is there any records of sports grounds anywhere that still exist today that predate the Mayan Pok-A-Pok stadium
at Chichen Itza?
--Mike
You pose a very interesting question. (Not to mention the longest question I've ever received.) I'm sure your friend is
quite right. The Greek stadia were not much more than
amphitheaters and, since they were used for festivals such as the
Olympics, the Nemean Games, etc., they were essentially
multi-sport stadia. And they were, in general, used only once
every four years, anyway.
The Roman Colosseum, of course, was used almost exclusively for
gladiatorial contests, which hardly count as sport. The Circus Maximus might qualify, since it was used mostly for chariot
races. (And its seating capacity has been estimated at 200,000!)
But, aside from those ancient possibilities, there was nothing
like a sports stadium (so far as I know) anywhere else in the
world until the late 19th Century.
Those early forms of football were played on open fields, with no
provision for spectators. The same is true of cricket,
stoolball, rounders, and every other early sport that I know of.
The one small exception that comes to mind is court (or "real,"
meaning "royal") tennis, which was originally played in a
courtyard. There was room on balconies for a few spectators, but
that hardly qualifies as a stadium.
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What were some key sporting events during the Renaissance age? What role did exercise and sports play in this age?
--Mandy
The "Renaissance man" was, of course, skilled in many things, and
sport was one of them. We're talking about the upper classes
here, courtiers and wealthy gentlemen. Most of their sports were
based on mimicking combat, because warfare was also supposed to
be one of their skills. Others were meant to prepare a person
for combat.
Baldassare Castiglione, in The Book of the Courtier (1528) sort of summed up what a number of earlier writers had said. He said the ideal courtier was an expert at fencing, archery, and
horsemanship, and should also know how to swim, leap, run and
throw stones(!) Hunting, including falconry, were also
considered important skills.
Competition was not a major factor. The only truly competitive
sport among the upper classes was court tennis. Other sports
were engaged in primarily as exercise--again, to attain fitness
and skills that would be helpful in warfare.
In England, Sir Thomas Elyot, in Book of the Governour (1531), which was also aimed at the upper class, praised running,
swimming, hunting, fencing, archery, court tennis, and dancing as
recreations that would make a gentleman "more strong and
valiant."
It's interesting that Elyot frowned on football and bowls (lawn
bowling). It indicates that these sports were fairly popular
among the masses at that time, but they weren't considered
socially worthy of the gentleman.
This is just a very quick summary, of course. For the upper
classes, sport was important, above all, as exercise, although
its value as recreation (that is, something that would help
refresh the mind as well as the body) was also important.
Most of what we know about sport comes from these accounts written for the upper classes. The masses enjoyed quoits (something like ring toss or horseshoes), lawn bowls, skittles,
and football (which was not anything like modern American
football). For them, sport was undoubtedly more like a relief
from the work and chores of their everyday life.
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I am in the 7th grade and would like to know what sports were around in the late 1800's. Some references would be appreciated!
--Sydelle
I don't know quite what you mean by "around." In the late 1800s,
almost all of the sports we know existed--although many of them
were quite a bit different than they are now.
Starting soon after the Civil War, there was a tremendous boom in
sports in the U.S. Baseball's National League started in 1876
and by about 1890 baseball was the most popular sport, both as a
spectator sport and as a recreational sport. College football
got going about the same time and was also very popular by the
1890s. Basketball wasn't invented until 1891, but it spread very
rapidly because it was a YMCA sport, so it was being played in Ys
all over the world within a few years. Hockey was around, but it
didn't really become popular in the U. S. until the 1920s (and
then only in the North, for obvious reasons).
Boxing was also a very popular sport by the 1890s, partly because
of the great John L. Sullivan, who was a national hero,
especially among Irish-American and recent Irish immigrants.
Tennis and golf, on the other hand, were around, but they weren't
really popular. They were pretty much confined to the upper
classes, because they were played mostly at private clubs that
only wealthy people could afford, and there weren't many fans
because they were viewed as "snobbish" sports.
A good general book is American Sports: From the Age of Folk
Games to the Age of Televised Sports, by Benjamin G. Rader. Part II is entitled "The Rise of Organized Sports, 1800-1890."
Another pretty good one is Saga of American Sport, by John A. Lucas and Ronald A. Smith.
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