The purpose of the study was to analyze the differences in athletes’perceptions of power base in their athletic coaches between sports types. To identify the basis of authoritative qualities necessary for a coach to improve the capabilities of a team, team operation and athletic performance, a total of 420 players were surveyed. The subjects consisted of 219 athletes in men’s ball games(soccer and baseball) and 183 in men’s combat sports(wrestling and taekwondo), who participate on either domestic university or community teams. During the data analysis processing, 18 questionnaires out of 420 were omitted due to the lacking of sufficient data to draw a conclusion and to prove reliability of data. A total of 402 questionnaires were categorized and the results of each survey were compared. The results are as follows. First, for an athletic coach’s power base in relation to a sporting event, athletes from both ball games and combat sports commonly acknowledge expert power most. Athletes in ball games highly recognize a coaches authority in the categories of expert power, legitimate power, and reference power over that of athletes in combat games. Statistical differences are significant. Second, for an athletic coach’s power base in relation to an athletes’choice of sport type, players who voluntarily chose the sport event by themselves highly recognize reference power more than those who chose the events through influence or coercion from their parents or others. Statistical differences are significant. In ball games, athletes who voluntarily chose the sports event by themselves highly acknowledged reference power more than those who chose the events through influence from their parents or others and the athletic coach’s power base in relation to the athletes’choice of sport type showed significant differences in the statistics.
In the combat games, for an athletic coach’s power base in relation to an athletes’choice of sport type, players who voluntarily chose the sports event by themselves highly recognized legitimate power more than those who chose the events through influence from their parents or others, and there showed significant statistical differences. Third, the research results of all athletes’perceptions of an athletic coach’s power base in relation to performance showed no significant differences in the statistics. For an athletic coach’s power base in relation to performance, there were no significant statistical differences recognized by athletes in both ball games and combat sports.