Sports Motivation Paper

Sports Motivation Paper

Stephanie Mosley

PSY 320 Human Motivation

University of Phoenix, Augusta Campus

Dr. Bradford James

7/29/10

Human motivation has been studied for several years. Studies have shown that a great way to motivate humans is through incentives. Sports personalities are some of the highly paid people on the planet. They are motivated by intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors. In this paper, I will choose a sports team and use a player to describe what individual incentives are included in his contract. I will also discuss how these incentives can impact extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. I will also describe how these incentives my positively or negatively impact team results. Last I will describe an alternative approach that can be used to motivate an individual while avoiding a negative impact on individual or team results.

For this paper I decided to choose Terrell Owens since he recently signed with the Cincinnati Bengals. Owens is known for being a receiver for the Buffalo Bills last season. During his season with the Buffalo Bills, Owens scored five touchdowns and caught 55 passes for 829 yards. The Bengals are hoping that Owens will help improve their passing game for the next season. According to ESPN, The Bengals and Owens agreed to a $2 million deal which also includes $2 million in incentives. Owens could earn $333,000 each for passing the following milestones: 60 catches, 100 catches, 900 receiving yards, 1300 receiving yards, 10 touchdowns and 14 touchdowns (2010, Schefter). Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown states, “I think that I would rather have him line up on our side of the ball than the other side of the ball," Brown said, at the team's annual preseason luncheon. "I can remember playing Dallas a few years ago when he caught a pass across the middle that won the game for them.” Successfully signing Terrell Owens could be an excellent opportunity to win.

There are other factors to consider. Team...