Just Sport

Abstract
Grantland Rice (1880–1954), the legendary American sportswriter, gave over 50 years of his life to being a faithful watcher of the derring-do of others. Among the more stubborn issues he confronted was the amateur/professional distinction. He was not especially impressed with the idea or the consequence of institutionalizing this distinction. Instead, he consistently argued for universalizing an experiential definition of sport that was in spirit amateur-like but that was not contrary to professionalism. This spirit, what here is called just sport, depended upon the adjectival and the adverbial senses of the word just. Sport—no matter the version of it played—should be at once both fair (just) and only (just) sport. Consequently, whoever enters the sporting world is obligated to accept the restrictions of sport's inherent code of fair play and, by playing it so, perpetuates the idea of playing sport for sport's sake.
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