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SPT 333 Final Project Guidelines for Pay Athletes
Overview
The final project for this course will be the creation of a
personal plan of action. You will select a sport industry-related
issue or topic you feel strongly about and analyze the societal,
ethical, political, and other aspects of the issue. You will
articulate the various perspectives and discuss the
interpretations of the issue. You will then focus on how you
think the issue can be addressed, using scholarly support and
theories to create a conceptual plan for use in your future
career.
Ethics and considerations of cultural and societal impact are
important aspects in any area of business, but they are of
particular importance in an industry that is as expansive and
impactful to such a large population as the sport industry.
Individual athletes and sports teams are often role models for
the young, facilities and sport organizations employ vast
numbers of people, and the sport industry in general has a
global reach.
Professionals entering the sport industry are bound to encounter
a wide range of ethical and moral dilemmas due to the
industry’s global reach and culturally influential nature.
Therefore, it is important for such professionals to be able to
balance various perspectives on sport-related topics and
consider the social, cultural, and political impacts of decisions
made.
The final project for this course will help prepare you for the
complex considerations that a sport management professional

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might face, while allowing you the opportunity to establish a
stance on an existing issue within sport. Specifically, you will
develop a personal plan of action in which you will select a
topic or area of the sport industry you find intriguing and
analyze an existing issue related to that topic from various
perspectives. After performing a balanced analysis of the topic
and issue, you will establish your own stance on that issue and
outline a plan for addressing the issue in your future career.
Using your conclusions from your issue analysis and plan for
addressing that issue, you will conclude your personal plan of
action by creating a general framework to help you navigate
moral and ethical dilemmas in your future career. This final
piece will require you to place yourself in a management role
and consider the balance between business ends and impact on
internal and external stakeholders, in general terms.
Your personal plan of action will be considered for inclusion in
the professional portfolio that you will create during your
capstone course.
This assessment addresses the following course outcomes:
· Analyze specific topics within the global sport industry for
their greater cultural, social, and political implications
· Articulate opposing viewpoints of moral dilemmas in a fair
and balanced manner with consideration of inherent biases
· Apply management and leadership theories related to ethics
and professionalism to personal approaches for balancing
business needs with the health and welfare of internal and
external stakeholders
· Develop a well-grounded conceptual plan for driving change
in an area of personal importance and effectively tackling moral
and ethical challenges that may occur in future careers within
the sport industry Prompt
Your personal plan of action should answer the following
prompt: Focusing on a sport industry-related topic of interest,

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identify an issue you feel strongly about. The sport topic you
select can be anything from health impacts of youth sport to
hiring equality and beyond, as long as the topic is relevant for
the sport industry. From this topical area, discuss the issue you
identified from multiple perspectives, considering cultural,
social, and political implications, and establish a solution
approach. Finally, extend your solutions approach and the
considerations you made during analysis into a more general
framework you can use as a
manager in your future sport-related career.
Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:
I. Personal Statement of Intent: Craft a personal statement of
intent that clearly and directly communicates the issue you see,
the impact it has, and how you plan to address it in your future
career. You will expand upon this statement in the rest of your
plan. While this piece should appear first in your final
submission, you will craft it after you have worked on the other
sections, much like the introduction or abstract of a report or
scholarly article.
II. Issue Analysis: In this section, you will focus on a topical
area in the sport industry and dissect an issue in that area of
importance to you.
A. Outline the topic area you chose, and explain the evolution
of the issue and its significance in relation to the topic. Be sure
to discuss the type of issue (moral, ethical, legal) in your
explanation of its significance.
B. Analyze the impact (or potential impact) of the issue on sport
as a global industry and support with examples.
C. Determine the cultural, social, and political implications of
the issue and its larger topic, justifying conclusions with
supported theories and research evidence. For example, you may
apply gender theory if relevant to your issue to highlight the
social implications.

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III. Balanced Review: In this section, consider your own and
others’ biases as you review other perspectives on the issue. A.
Reflect on personal biases that may be influencing your
interpretation of the issue.
B. Explain other viewpoints on the issue in a balanced, logical
manner. What other arguments are being made about the issue?
C. Select one of the other viewpoints on the issue and analyze it
for potential biases. How did you recognize these biases?
IV.
Solution
s Approach: In this section, outline a solutions approach for
addressing the issue you have analyzed. A. Outline
recommendations you find relevant for addressing the issue
based on your analysis.
B. Defend each of your recommendations with research support
and examples from other relevant solutions applied within the
sport industry.
V. Conceptual Framework for Driving Change:In this section,
you will outline a framework for driving change in the issue you
chose. You will then expand upon the ideas in this issue
analysis and establish an approach to handling other moral and
ethical dilemmas you may encounter in your future career. You
will apply management and leadership theories to your approach

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and highlight the importance of ethics and morality in the
greater sport industry.
A. Integrate your identified recommendations into a conceptual
plan for driving change regarding the issue you have chosen. In
other words, how do you see yourself driving change regarding
this issue, and how will your analysis of the issue and your
recommendations help you?
B. Determine management and leadership theories that you will
apply in your future career to assist you in driving change in a
particular area of your chosen issue. Explain.
C. Expand upon your plan for driving change in relation to the
issue you have chosen by drawing connections to general moral
and ethical dilemmas you are likely to encounter in your future
career. Discuss how the solutions approach for this particular
issue extends to ethical and moral challenges you may face.
Provide examples.
D. In your future career, you may be placed in a position in
which your decisions will impact internal and external
stakeholders. Explain how you plan to apply leadership and
management theories, specifically related to ethics and
professionalism to your framework to help you balance business
needs and the health and welfare of internal and external
stakeholders. You do not have to use specific situations unless
you feel they will help illustrate communicate your intent, but
rather, discuss theories and how you plan to use them in guiding

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your decisions in the future.
Milestones
Final Project Milestone One: Analyzing the Issue
In Module Three, you will submit a 2- to 3-page paper
analyzing the moral, ethical, or legal issue in sports that you
have chosen to examine for your final project, the personal plan
of action. The purpose of this first milestone is to provide you
with an opportunity to assess your issue, generally, and to
analyze it from different perspectives. Thoroughly
understanding the issue will prepare you for proposing potential
solutions to the issue going forward. This milestone is graded
with the Milestone One Rubric.
Final Project Milestone Two: A