Bad history is behind our fervent belief in the purity of amateur athletics
Why do we distinguish between amateur and professional sports?
An article in Ohio State University's Origins website explains it's because of the Victorians. In their view, Athens was good and Rome bad. Athens, you see, was pure athletics. Rome was coerced athletics corrupted by money and power.
We might ask why references to ancient Greece and Rome pervade our discussions of sport. What are we trying to evoke when we refer to the values and practices of these classical societies? Is there in fact a direct line of influence from ancient Athens, through Rome, to modern America?
The answers to these questions are found in the ways Americans have understood classical culture. In fact, as surprising as it may be to sports watchers and commentators, how Americans talk about sports today is a legacy of how 19th-century Europeans interpreted the classical past. ...
The ideals of Athens, according to this symbolic understanding, lead us to civilization and morality. Roman values, on the other hand, take us down the road of depravity and moral decline.
The problem with this narrative is that the Victorians got their history wrong:
Scholars now accept that the modern definition of amateurism did not apply to ancient Athens. While victors at Panhellenic games such as the Olympics only collected foliage crowns as official prizes, they did receive monetary or other material rewards from their home city-states. Specialized, intensive training and diet were also essential in order to win large or prestigious competitions, implying an approach to sport more professional than amateur.