Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- A guide to prices, 1870–1914
- Part I An overview
- Part II The development of professional gate-money sport
- Part III Sport in the market place: the economics of professional sport
- Part IV Playing for pay: professional sport as an occupation
- Part V Unsporting behaviour
- 17 Ungentlemanly conduct
- 18 The madding crowd
- Part VI A second overview
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
17 - Ungentlemanly conduct
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- A guide to prices, 1870–1914
- Part I An overview
- Part II The development of professional gate-money sport
- Part III Sport in the market place: the economics of professional sport
- Part IV Playing for pay: professional sport as an occupation
- Part V Unsporting behaviour
- 17 Ungentlemanly conduct
- 18 The madding crowd
- Part VI A second overview
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
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.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pay Up and Play the GameProfessional Sport in Britain, 1875–1914, pp. 259 - 265Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988