The noble expression about how you play the game is a Greek historian’s fifth-century B.C. reference to the Olympians.
He wrote, “Tis not for Money they contend, but for Glory”.
The phrase resurfaced in 1927 when the great sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote,
“For when the great scorer comes to write against your name, He marks not that you won or lost but how you played the game.”
Jacob B. Downie (1843-1912) wrote a poem:
We cant all play a winning game,
Someone is sure to lose.
Yet we can play so that our name,
No one may dare accuse,
That when the Master Referee
Scores against our nane,
It wont be whether we won or lost,
But how we played the game