Now before y'all start getting yer knickers in a knot, let's realize that this is not a unique circumstance.

On the All-American game of football -

Elliott J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein, in their book, A Brief History of American Sports, show that America’s games have always carried ideological freight. New England’s killjoy Puritans frowned on everything boisterous, sensual and passionate, including such popular pastimes as cockfighting, watching dogs tear bulls to pieces, and putting a terrier in a pit with 100 rats and seeing how many he could kill in a set time.

But Victorian values were wielded in defense of sports. The body as the soul’s temple should be a worthy sanctuary. Hence “muscular Christianity.” Worried that Gilded Age prosperity would feminize men, sport was promoted as controlled aggression, a surrogate battlefield on which young men could replicate their fathers’ Civil War heroism.

College football as the moral equivalent of war appealed mightily to Teddy Roosevelt, whose companions on the charge up San Juan Hill included a Yale quarterback and a Princeton tennis champion. “Masterful nations,” he said, have rugged sports to promote “virile virtues.” But football became too warlike even for TR, who gave football’s big three — Yale, Harvard and Princeton, believe it or not — a White House dressing down.

Bill Shankly wrote, 'Sport is not a matter of life and death. It is much more important than that.'

In Victorian ideology (the 18th century), sport was linked with character-building, the 'will to win' , the mark of the 'true leader', and 'fair play' (an aristocratic concept constantly subverted, for example, by professional wrestling, the plebeian desire to win at all costs). The competitive drive has always been challenged by other values such as social mixing or simply the fear of early death: tennis clubs, Fun Runs, aerobics, frisbee throwing.

Vince Lombardi often captured the feeling - [and remember this about football, not martial arts]

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.

If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?

The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.

It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.

The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.

Winners never quit and quitters never win.

After the cheers have died down and the stadium is empty, after the headlines have been written and after you are back in the quiet of your room and the championship ring has been placed on the dresser and all the pomp and fanfare has faded, the enduring things that are left are: the dedication to excellence, the dedication to victory, and the dedication to doing with our lives the very best we can to make the world a better place in which to live.

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.

The Green Bay Packers never lost a football game. They just ran out of time.

For games that carry national spirit, look at bozkashi - the national sport of Afghaniston, the pride New Zealanders take in the All Blacks rugby team, or field hockey in Pakistan.

So the association of national pride/honour and a particular sport is not new. In the case of taekwondo, however, the support and shaping of the sport has never been, at least in modern times, so long term and so obvious.