Games and Sports

Archive for December, 2009

There are many career choices in sports besides being an athlete. While athletes may have the most glamorized positions in sports, there are many options if you wish to find a career in this field. Here are 5 of those popular alternatives.

Sports Psychologist

Sports psychologists are focused on the mental aspects of sports. These mental aspects include how a player’s psychology influences their performance and how participation in a sport can affect a player. If you are interested in the study of people in sports with a specific focus on their thoughts and resulting behavior then this could be the career for you. Whether you are conducting research or working one-on-one with patients, this field offers many specific areas of study. A few examples of these areas are leadership, personality, motivation, and the setting of goals.

Sports Agent

Sports agents handle a variety of duties. Basically, sports agents represent their clients who play the sport. The main duty of sports agents is negotiating the contracts that determine how much an athlete gets paid for playing. Because of this, sports agents are often lawyers. This helps sports agents to understand and to be hands-on in contract negotiations. They also take care of sponsorships, financial matters, and public relations issues.

Sports Scout

Sports scouts make their living by checking out young players and deciding if players have potential to play for the teams that the sports agent represents. To do this, these agents must have a lot of experience in whatever sport they are scouting for. This experience may take the form of playing for college or professional teams or coaching at these levels. In some cases sports scouts may have just had a great interest in a sport and may have learned that way. The actual act of scouting necessitates a lot of travel for sports scouts to see players in person to evaluate their skills.

Sports Writer

Sports writers cover a variety of sports topics. Besides reporting on the play-by-play actions of games, sports writers comment on why games went the way they did, the future potential of teams, and player profiles. While at one time sports writers were employed almost exclusively by newspapers and magazines, now the internet plays a vital role in sports coverage. Websites for sports teams, for general sports news, and even blogs all cover sporting events and all the information and speculation surrounding them. There are many such opportunities out there for anyone who loves to write about sports.

Sports Announcer

Sports announcers cover the action and give the play-by-play. They get to report on the action as it happens. While this may seem like an enviable position, by the time you make it to the high status sports announcer jobs, you will have put in enough work to deserve it. This is a field where you have to work your way up but the rewards can be well worth it.

These 5 popular options for a career in sports show you that there are many jobs besides athlete in the sports world. If you have a love of sports but are not a seasoned athlete or are not one anymore then you can still work in this field. You just have to look to alternate sports careers like these.

Tom Rheinecker blogs about how to apply to sports management colleges.