When the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name—
He marks—not that you won or lost—but how you played the game.

These lines come from Grantland Rice’s poem “Alumnus Football,” written in the early 20th century when Rice was emerging as America’s best-known sportswriter. The poem reflects the era’s “muscular Christianity” and amateur-sport ideals, treating football as a moral training ground rather than merely a contest for victory. The “One Great Scorer” is a quasi-religious figure—an ultimate judge—invoked to shift attention from the scoreboard to character, effort, and sportsmanship. The couplet became widely quoted beyond sports pages, often used in graduation speeches, coaching lore, and memorials to emphasize integrity over outcomes.

Rice contrasts worldly measures of success (winning and losing) with an ethical or spiritual evaluation of a life. By imagining a final “score” kept by a higher authority, the poem reframes competition as a test of conduct: courage, fairness, perseverance, and grace under pressure. The line’s enduring appeal lies in its portability—“the game” can mean athletics, work, or life itself—making it a succinct argument that process and character matter more than results. It also captures a distinctly American ideal of sports as moral education, where the worth of striving is not erased by defeat.