The Greatest Misquote in the History of Sport
By Fred Northup

"Grantland Rice was a bum." Or so thought Peter Rathbone when I was in prep school. He said that because he mistakenly thought that the famous sportswriter had said, "It matters not if you win or lose, it's how you play the game." Peter liked to win and was as fierce a competitor as there has ever been. In fact, that is not what Rice said. His words were, "When the One Great Scorer comes to mark beside your name, He marks not that you won nor lost, but how you played the game." Of course it matters whether you win or lose! Rice knew that as well as any. But something matters more: how you played the game. In other words, did you cheat? Did you give it your best effort? Did you encourage your teammates to give their best effort to win? How did you treat your opponent? Every time a game is played someone "loses" (except in rare games which have ties). When you look back over your entire lifetime of competitive sports - when the One Great Scorer comes to judge - how will you want to be remembered? What matters the most to you, how often you won, or what other people thought about you? The Great Scorer isn't worried about how many games Arthur Ashe won. The Scorer won't be worried about how many home runs Sammy Sosa or Mark McGuire hit. The One Great Scorer wants to know what kind of people we are, what kind of example we set, what the values are that have formed our sporting life. A game is just a game. Who we are and what we do with our lives is really important. Of course it matters if you win or lose. It matters a lot. But it matters a whole lot more how you play the game, what kind of person you are.