The Campaign for Athletes' Rights

• Author: Kenny Moore
• DOI: 10.1177/000271627944500108
• Published date: 01 September 1979
• Date: 01 September 1979
• Subject Matter: Articles

The Campaign for Athletes’ Rights
By KENNY MOORE
ABSTRACT: Amateur athletes who pursue their sport pri-
marily for its own sake feel they have, or ought to have, the
right to compete wherever they are physically qualified. Yet,
as reported by athletes’ groups and confirmed by the Presi-
dent’s Commission on Olympic Sports (1975-1977), this free-
dom has been abridged by practically all major amateur sports
organizations such as the NCAA (The National Collegiate
Athletic Association) and AAU (Amateur Athletic Union). The
President’s Commission recommended statutory guarantees
of the right to compete in international competition, but the
campaign for such a law ran into the lobbying power of the
NCAA. A compromise was effected, permitting the Amateur
Sports Act of 1978 to pass, thus reorganizing much of American
amateur sport. But athletes’ rights do not yet enjoy the protec-
tion in law desired by most athletes.
Kenny Moore ran the marathon for the United States in the 1968 and 1972 Olympic
Games. Moore received a Bachelors and Masters’ Degrees from the University of
Oregon and is currently a contributing editor of Sports Illustrated. He served as co-
editor of the Final Report of the President’s Commission on Olympic Sports in 1976
is a member
of the Athletes Advisory Council of the United States Olympic Commit-
tee and of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Track and Field Committee.
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THROUGH the winter of my ducted no marathons of its own; if I
junior year at the University of
chose to compete at Boston, The
Oregon, I worked weekends on the
University of Oregon would be re-
graveyard shift at a local plywood
quired by the NCAA to deny me at
mill. Sometimes along toward dawn
least a year’s college eligibility.
on Sundays, I got a little faint, as I
Bowerman raged on the phone to
usually had done my weekly 30-
Kansas, but changed nothing.
mile run the day before. The ob-
I ran through Eugene’s forested
ject of both these disciplines was the
hills with bitter incomprehension,
same-to
earn my
plane fare and de-
some
of which remains with me
now.
velop my fitness for the 1965 Boston
Surely an athlete, an amateur ath-
Marathon.
lete who by definition pursues his
Though I was then a steeplechaser
sport for the sake of simple excel-
and three-miler in college meets, my
lence, who is unencumbered by pro-
coach, William J. Bowerman, who
fessional contracts or owners, must
would later serve as the 1972 Olym-
have a right to compete in any event
pic Head Coach for track and field,
for which he or she is physically
had perceived that my best distances
qualified. What possible reason
were far longer, and together we had
could make it otherwise?
laid training and racing plans for the
Boston race as a test of his judg-
AN HISTORICAL DIVISION-AAU
ment and of my athletic future. I
vs. NCAA
remember the final weeks before the
April event as ones of suppressed
As it happened, in 1965 the NCAA
eagerness, of excitement building as
had its reasons. To make them clear
my workouts improved to the point
requires a long step back, to 1880 or
of seeming to make me a contender.
thereabouts, the period when ama-
Though I would wear an Oregon
teur sports organization began to be
shirt, the university’s crusty athletic
framed in America. In a manner al-
director had said that I would have
most unique among nations, sports
to pay my own way, there being no
took shape around education. As it
provision for marathons in the col-
did so, a division began to form, one
lege budget. So I labored, feeding
that haunts sport politics to this day.
splintery veneer into a block-long
On one side were the high schools
dryer to earn my passage, and in the
and colleges which came to conduct
process earned the growing respect
by far the preponderance of athletic
of my coach.
programs for the most athletes by the
Thus, there was anguish in his
most coaches. On the other side
voice when he told me, a week be-
were the administrative bodies,
fore the race, that it did not appear
such as the AAU, which were...