This study explored the reasons people choose physical education teaching as a profession and investigated the relationship of these choices with motivation. Physical education pre-service teachers (n = 324) completed the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) and a measure of reasons for choosing physical education teaching. Confident interpersonal service reasons were linked with intrinsic motivation; whereas sport and physical activity reasons were related to extrinsic motivation. Enrolling because teaching seemed easy was linked with a motivation. Motivation was similar for different course entry methods, however, females were more intrinsically motivated than males and third year students were lower in motivation than other year levels. (Contains 8 tables.)