Athletics (physical culture) in the context of "Athletes"

An athlete is most commonly a person who competes in one or more sports involving physical strength, speed, power, or endurance. Sometimes, the word "athlete" is used to refer specifically to sport of athletics competitors, i.e. including track and field and marathon runners but excluding e.g. swimmers, footballers or basketball players. However, in other contexts (mainly in the United States) it is used to refer to all athletics (physical culture) participants of any sport. For the latter definition, the word sportsperson or the gendered sportsman or sportswoman are also used. A third definition is also sometimes used, meaning anyone who is physically fit regardless of whether they compete in a sport.

Athletes may be professionals or amateurs. Most professional athletes have particularly well-developed physiques obtained by extensive physical training and strict exercise, accompanied by a strict dietary regimen.

A sophist (Greek: σοφιστής, romanized: sophistēs) was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught arete, "virtue" or "excellence", predominantly to young statesmen and nobility.

The arts of the sophists were known as sophistry and gained a negative reputation as tools of arbitrary reasoning. Protagoras, regarded as the first of the sophists, became notorious for his claim to "make the weaker argument the stronger".

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and 1 in Canada. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Until the 1956–57 academic year, the NCAA was a single division for all schools. That year, the NCAA split into the University Division and the College Division. In August 1973, the current three-division system of Division I, Division II, and Division III was adopted by the NCAA membership in a special convention. Under NCAA rules, Division I and Division II schools can offer athletic scholarships to students. Division III schools may not offer any athletic scholarships. Generally, larger schools compete in Division I and smaller schools in II and III. Division I football was further divided into I-A and I-AA in 1978, while Division I programs that did not have football teams were known as I-AAA. In 2006, Divisions I-A and I-AA were, respectively, renamed the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). In its 2022–23 fiscal year, the NCAA generated $1.28 billion in revenue, $945 million (74%) of which came from airing rights to the Division I men's basketball tournament.