I'm sorry but you're wrong with many if not every statement you mention. I got the chance to play Tomo, in La Jolla CA I believe and he never threw anyone he played against there. I also played other top players from S. Cali back in the day, Wei,Dave and a couple others at San Diego UTC arcade where the best players from S.Cali had tournaments. THEY DID NOT THROW! Matter of fact, I recall Wei (don't really know if anyone remembers him?) but he was the best San Diego player if I recall correctly, anyways he was using Ryu and so was I, he got close and did a short short fierce> fireball and I blocked, he then tried some other move but ended up throwing me, his words were "shit, sorry man" and he let me throw him back. So no, they didn't throw. If you want to know the reason why throwing became ok in tournaments was only because some players used to get hits in and then they'd let time run out, which was horrible especially when characters didn't have a fireball, and there was no chip damage. That's the ONLY reason top players accepted throwing. Also, I went to arcades in all california, Texas, and even Tijuana and they all had this throwing philosophy, so I'm curious about where exactly were your "not scrub" arcades? To me people who deny this were either people who knew it was cheap and didn't care or people who were the REAL scrubs and hid their deficiency in skill by walking up to the better player and pressing a button to throw.
TL;DR- Yes, throwing was always considered cheap!