Business Studies

Pro Sport Discussion Question

Re-designing the pipeline and treatment of current and future professional athletes

The current and future professional athletes will continue to face challenges in their long term development due to poor coaching and poor athletic development. Ideally, athletic development entails skills, health, and performance-related components. Individuals that are responsible for the development of athletes include sports coaches and sports administrators. One of the significant problems that have caused challenges in the long term development of athletes is the imbalance of power between the athlete and the decision-makers (Hardman and Jones, 2010). In this, power imbalance refers to the amount of control that one part has over the other.

Ideally, the relationship between athletes and coaches, as well as the power balance, is essential. This is because coaching entails an exchange relation whereby coaches significantly contribute to expertise, knowledge. Coaches have higher power levels in this relationship while the athletes are compliant, which brings about the imbalance of control and power. Considerably, imbalance of power has influenced the long term development of athletes, mostly young athletes. Emerging literature has indicated problems that are related to the abuse of power. For instance, in recent studies, it is clear that athletes suffer from sexual, physical, and emotional abuse (Hardman and Jones, 2010). The power of the coach as the decision making has been considered as the contributing factor in this abusive relationship.

Fairness has been a great issue among athletes and coaches. Fairness suggests that coaches and athletes followed established guidelines and rules. Fairness also includes avoiding discrimination against coaches and athletes on gender, race, and sexual orientation. Ethical coaching has also been another major challenge among young athletes (Taylor and Garratt, 2008). Coaches have failed to tailor techniques that positively fit and encourage personal development and long-term athlete development among youths. Coaches have failed to protect the safety and health of youths during competition and training. Ideally, promoting the safety and health of young athletes is essential in ensuring that young athletes benefit from sports at a tender age.

The coaches have failed to take responsibility for young athletes concerning their bodies and the long-term negative and positive decisions. Coach bribery schemes have greatly influenced athletes. Coaches and sports administrators have violated the NCAA rules, which have been aimed at ensuring long life and well-being of the college athletes. For instance, the coaches bend the rules of recruitment and carry on the dirty work to secure future clients. Athletic programs have been used to gain millions while colleges exploit rules and gain contracts with commercial enterprises, thus increasing corruption among the training coaches.

Professional athletes train extensively for years, consuming a lot of their young lives and make personal sacrifices to achieve their dreams. This may include large financial sacrifices, training full time, and dedicating their academic time to sports. The transition into retirement has presented a challenging part of athletes as they enter their new life. The termination of the sports career brings about dramatic changes in the athlete’s personal, occupation, and social lives, which can greatly affect the individuals emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally. The professional and social changes induced by the retirement of sports can lead to distressful actions. This is because the retired athletes show a feeling of emptiness since they are not psychologically prepared. Athletes have lacked effective retirement plans from their coaches. For instance, a retirement that is forced through athlete injury has been associated with high psychological issues due to a lack of effective adjustment.

League Policies to Extend Athlete development and Services

The key task for league commissioners is to create an ideal environment that enables athletes to perform better. Adopting long term development policies for athletes will assure that every athlete has reached their full potential. The long term development policies will focus on social, physical, emotional, and cognitive growth for athletes. There is a need for policies that will develop intrinsic and extrinsic motivation which will empower the athletes. This will allow them to be responsible for their development and learning. For instance, transition services will assist the transition of college athletes to professional athletes and help transition their lives after sports (Park, Lavallee, and Tod, 2013).

Relatively, athletes consider that every real competition has to offer extrinsic motivators. There is an increasing demand for incentives and rewards to increase athletic performance. Therefore, the league commissioners need to establish policies related to the psycho-social development of athletes. For instance, there is a need for the NCAA to establish policies that will facilitate equivalent pay to young athletes that bring them millions of dollars annually. The college athletes need to be paid beyond scholarships in order for them to meet their basic needs and eliminate the unethical coach practices such as coach bribery schemes.

There is a need to increase the quantity and value of incentives through redistributing wealth among the players to motivate them on an ongoing basis. The sport league owners have enjoyed monopoly power, which has harmed taxpayers and players. The sport league owners have agreed by themselves to limit competition for the service of athletes, which makes it challenging for players to find the realistic option in professional sports. The league commissioners need to distribute the owner’s wealth to extend development and services to the athletes that generate wealth to the league owners.

References

Hardman, A. R., & Jones, C. (Eds.). (2010). The ethics of sports coaching. Routledge.

Park, S., Lavallee, D., & Tod, D. (2013). Athletes’ career transition out of sport: A systematic review. International review of sport and exercise psychology, 6(1), 22-53.

Taylor, B., & Garratt, D. (2008). Professionalization in sports coaching: issues and conceptualization.