It sounds like dealing in cattle to buy your shoelaces.

Maybe athletes lost something when they broke the "silly" amateur /
pro dividing lines that existed until the early 80's. It seemed like
snobby, archaic rules were keeping athletes away from the (easy?)
money they needed.

Be careful what you wish for!

Maybe Western sport should've been left in its class-based condition,
letting the fancy lads have their fun -- and letting them get mopped
up by the Commies.

The converse is to democratize sport, letting "regular" people go for
the money -- throwing them into the hilarity of juggling dozens of
contracts which aren't very reliable in the end.

It's amazing to consider a mogul skier trying to invent two
businesses, paying to launch them, so that maybe in the end she can
run a business and make enough money so that she can be rich enough to
ski race. We're back to where we started! Ya gotta be rich to ski
race. In the day of the amateur athlete if they came from money we
just let the person ski. Now they have to create their own wealth
first! And of course that's a well-known 1-in-10 proposition. We
might've been as likely to get good skiers who can fund themselves or
put together their own financial structures from the pieces of dozens
of funding opportunities as we were to get good skiers out of the
already-wealthy amateur system.

Maybe this is why there's a market for agents. But do agents spend
much time representing minor sports? I suspect it's never easy for the
little guy. Such an athlete would have to do most of the work setting
up the situation and structure. Oh well, at least they have a chance,
of sorts.

Both old and new approaches seem to take a bit of sports-ability out
of the game and replace it with other skills or conditions.

That's part of the drama, I suppose.

Can the Home Depot employee come out on top? Can the coffee pitchman
prevail? Or, maybe it'll be a perfume-making, coffee-roasting, Home
Depot employee who is finally able to buy enough food, airfare and
coaching to put together a winning combination.

It might end up making a government/academic-sponsored situation --
that is, a Commie system -- look like the next sweet thing to pine
over. Then we'll have the double circle completed!

Then again maybe sports (even ski-cross! ...even moguls!) should be
part-time after all. Maybe hobby level is where they belong and there
are more important things to do with the bulk of anyone's day...

We'd find that out quick-like if ad expenses ever became taxable...

--JP