For more than six decades the NCAA has defined “student-athletes” as amateurs so that its member institutions could avoid paying workers’ compensation to injured athletes. The origins of the term can be traced back to a Colorado Supreme Court case,
University of Denver v. Nemeth (1953). In 1950, Ernest Nemeth, a football player at the University Denver, suffered an injury during spring practice. He filed a claim against the university alleging that he was hired by the school to play football and that his injury was a result of his employment. Three years later, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a ruling by the state Industrial Commission that Nemeth was indeed an employee as defined by Colorado’s worker’s compensation statute. The Court determined that Nemeth’s compensation for playing football—an athletic scholarship, housing, meals, and a campus job—was contingent upon his ability to perform on the field, and therefore the university was obligated to provide workers’ compensation for his football-related injury.
After the Nemeth case, the NCAA recognized that its member schools were vulnerable in worker’s compensation cases. In response, the NCAA manufactured the “student-athlete” label. Walter Byers, then the Executive Director of the NCAA, later wrote, “we crafted the term student-athlete and soon it was embedded in all NCAA rules and interpretations as a mandated substitute for such words as players and athletes.” Soon the press began using the term, inscribing it into the national consciousness. By 1956, when schools first started offering recruits scholarships solely for their athletic ability, the
New York Times described football and basketball players as “student athletes.”
In constructing the “student-athlete,” the NCAA successfully convinced fans, sportswriters, and players to embrace the mythology of amateurism.
