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Show Rules Agreement Needed greatly benefits profession-alization--granted that professionals pro-fessionals should be more responsible to the broad base. But the Billie Jean King affect has increased tennis participation 20 in the last three years. And her life has been dedicated to helping other athletes. The IOC for its part, fears that an Open Olympics would increase what they consider UJS. "domination" of a few more sports although it would take the U.S. up., to eight years to catch up now. Other considerations con-siderations are that the IOC may be too tired, too set in their ways or uneasy over the shift of power and this might put an end to the world joke Oir the UJS. bungles (Continued page seven) BY Suzanne Chaffee With the decisions affecting affec-ting the future survial of the IOC Olympics, at stake here in Vienna, the questions naturally arise: How can we agree on the rules of the Games when we can't yet agree on why the Games exist? And what do we do about amateurism, commercialism commer-cialism and the UJS.? The communications gap between the UJS. and the IOC certainly has not helped. So let's clear that up. On the one hand, the USOC feels intimidated by the IOC's power, po-wer, but at the same time considers it so archaic, frozen fro-zen and frivolous that little UJS. organizational talent is willing to become "bogged down" in attempts to update it. On the other hand, the IOC feels that the United States and USOC being parochial, pa-rochial, less than broad minded and with a tendency to dominate anything they come in contact with have contributed too few significant signifi-cant improvements to the Games. There is also the emotional emo-tional factor: the "national character" gap between the more interpersonal and emotionally -oriented Europeans Eur-opeans and the legalistic, naively big brother elitist Americans. With their emphasis on winning andor profiting from competition, Americans Ameri-cans are not of a kind with Europeans, to whom human relations and personal harmony har-mony are a far more important im-portant sporting element. How can we accurately gauge the effect of proposed rules on the athletes, when we are far more concerned with the differing effects rule-changes might have on participating countries? De- spite the more liberal proposed pro-posed code, those new rules do not improve the, conditions condi-tions for the UJS. amateur athletes, nor does it improve the spirit of participation of the athletes of the world. Like the old rules the new rules benefit athletes whose countries have an effective national amateur program, i.e. most de eloped countries coun-tries except the U.S.Americans U.S.Amer-icans are reared in a free-enterprise free-enterprise culture which (10) If the IOC fails to deal realistically now with these questions of commercialism, commer-cialism, amateurism, and the UJ3., could the credibility credi-bility and survial of the IOC Games be at stake? (11) Could the athletes stage their own Open Games? (12) Will the IOC make it necessary for the US to resort re-sort to the ' modern Olympic-style Olympic-style pressure game' to also get its sports system tolerated? toler-ated? (13) Are the Olympics just a 'game'? Olympics (Continued from Page Six) in sports; although there are no complaints about American Ameri-can television's media domination" do-mination" which largely subsidizes the Games. Are we to hare an Open Games, or a restricted-selective restricted-selective Games? The IOC seems to prefer to retain the Games "paper" amateurism, amateur-ism, so as to salvage at least the image of old-school purity and idealism. This attitude is defended with the argument that the American Ameri-can way of "commercialism" "commercial-ism" would devour the Games. But maintenance of this status quo creates an emphasis of enforcement, rather than the peace, balance bal-ance of mental and physical and award-for-performance motivation considered so synonymous sy-nonymous with the Games. change? More questions: (1) Are American and world sports leaders unwilling, unwil-ling, out of fear, to come to grips openly with the amateurism ama-teurism question? (2) Even as the principles of commercialism threatens sports, might not a new future fu-ture minded philosophy of sports be used as a tonic for world commercialism? (3) How many more people in the world could afford to participate in sport if world industry fully backed sports as a means to increase productivity pro-ductivity and be humanly responsible re-sponsible to the individual? What other incentives are there to get the greatest number of people to participate partici-pate in sports? (4) The average 20 year old American is as physically physi-cally fit as a 62 year-old Scandinavian. If IQ is ef fected by sport, is there a correlation to some of the sick values, decisions, paranoid par-anoid defensive nuclear warfare, and excapism (to the moon), demonstrated by the UJ3.? (5) Is prevention of U.S. dominence still a significant factor? Or is an honest Olympics and the health of the UJS. and its healthier corresponding world policy decisions more important? (6) Is tolerance of each country's national programs consistent with the purposes of the Olympics? (7) Are the purposes of the Games important to individual indi-vidual self-realization; an inspiration for everybody in the world to do sports; a priority for world physical and mental health; a global meeting place of peaceful competition; a potential focal fo-cal point for international commonality of values? Others? Oth-ers? Or to maintain the old school ideal of 'paper' amateurism? ama-teurism? (8) Will paper amateurism amateur-ism continue to effectively enforce the balance of mental men-tal and physical, or would a more future-minded philosophy philos-ophy of the Olympics inspire that balance better? Is force more effective than inspiration? inspir-ation? Should the Olympic rules continue to address itself it-self and reinforce the lower of higher qualities of ' humans? (9) The Modern Amateur Olympics are 78 years old? What is the real reason the ancient Olympics lasted for over 1,000 years, and even affected peace, at least temporarily? tem-porarily? Are Olympic athletes ath-letes now 'highly skilled' enough (by definition) to be called 'professional'? And even now, the very quarrels quar-rels over possible commercialization commer-cialization do devour the Games. There is also the American Ameri-can athlete to consider, who has to grovel the most tc survive even though a big chunk of ABC money goes to underdeveloped African sports countries. Then some heads of state of these countries coun-tries put the aid money to bring Muhammed Ali to fight for their publicity. And of course the veneer of these wealthy UJ3. pros prevents the U.S. amateurs from qualifying qua-lifying for these handouts. Does the arbitrary handicapping handi-capping of any athlete aid the Games itself? Finally, are the Games to continue to be structured to fa-or those , countries whose professionalism profession-alism and state subsidy is unwritten and covert, and to punish those whose athletic policies, though identical, are openly stated and formalized? for-malized? The UJS. and Europeans Eur-opeans know the socialist countries are professionals and they can do whatever they want or they will split. But at the bottom line socialist responsibly provide sports to the greatest number of people, and gie them the social so-cial esteem they deserve. The rest of the world is just different degrees of professionalism. profes-sionalism. There's a great - deal of apathy among the UJS. athletes, ath-letes, officials and press jabout the Olympics. You know when apathy is the product pro-duct of a system chances are there's something that could be improved in the values, incentives or representation representa-tion of that system. One member of the UJS. press summed it up this way for most of his colleagues, 'The aversion to professionalizm is cultural lag, and hanging on to it simply creates messy contradictions." The VS. in its own unique way, just as the socialists and European sports Foundations, Foun-dations, would simply like to do the same, over the table. Are we so eager to penalize the VS. for its commercial national hang-up that we will hamstring and paralyze the Games itself, maintaining its inconsistencies, hypo-cricies hypo-cricies and stagnation rather than experimenting with |