Abstract
Generally, there has been improvement in the sporting facilities available in the Southwestern part of Nigeria, particularly when one compares it with what was available in the 1970s. Despite this, recent results at the National Sports Festivals have shown a decline in sports performances of the southwestern states. This could be traced to ineffectiveness of sports administrators, which may be due to personality traits being exhibited individually. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship among anxiety, fear, obsession, depression, health concern, bizarre-mentation, anger, cynicism, anti-social practices, type A, of Sports Administrators and effective sports management in state sports councils of South Western Nigeria. Descriptive survey research design was adopted and data were collected with a modified standardized instrument – MMPI-2 and a validated self developed questionnaire (ESMQ) from 425 sports administrators who were purposively sampled. Cronbach alpha was used for the reliability coefficient of the instruments and the result obtained were based on the different sections of the modified MMPI-2 (Anxiety .85, fear .75, obsession .77, depression .84, health concern .87, anger .79, cynicism .84) and ESMQ, .81. Data was analyzed using multiple regression analysis; the results showed that personality factors significantly jointly predicted effective sports administration. However, not all the factors had significant independent contributions. The paper concluded that the personality of sports administrators is a predictor of effective sports administration in south western Nigeria. It is recommended that personality test should be used as an additional method of screening sports administrators before their involvement in sports management. Despite this finding, more studies may be necessary in order to expand the scope of the present study and find out more variables that may influence the effective sports administration.