“You can play hurt, but you can’t play injured” (sports adage)

Sports sometimes makes a distinction between “playing hurt” and “playing injured.” Many players are not 100% when they enter a game and suffer cuts or sprains. A player must not, however, play injured at a risk to that player’s health.
 
A newspaper article in July 1978 credited the saying to Penn State football coach Joe Paterno:
 
“Joe Paterno, the Penn State coach, says a football player is either hurt or injured. You can play hurt, he insists, but you can’t play injured. That used to be a standard joke joke on the team. Somebody would accidentally bump into Paterno on the field and say, ‘Hey, Joe, are you hurt or injured?’”
   
 
Google News Archive
12 July 1978, Pittsburgh (PA) Post-Gazette (Junction City, KS), “Football and Pain, Go Hand in Hand” by Jimmy Cefalo, pg. 13, col. 1:
Joe Paterno, the Penn State coach, says a football player is either hurt or injured. You can play hurt, he insists, but you can’t play injured. That used to be a standard joke joke on the team. Somebody would accidentally bump into Paterno on the field and say, “Hey, Joe, are you hurt or injured?”
 
Google News Archive
10 September 1986, Beaver County (PA) Times, “Returning players may help Steeler running game” by Tim Wesley, pg. C1, col. 5:‎
“You know the old saying, ‘You can play hurt, but you can’t play injured.’”
(Rich Erenberg of the Pittsburgh Steelers—ed.)
 
Google News Archive
11 August 1996, Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA), pg. 10E, col. 1:
Playing hurt is OK;
playing injured isn’t
By Vintage Foster
of Knight-Ridder newspapers
 
Google Books
Rehabilitation Techniques in Sports Medicine
By William E. Prentice
Boston, MA: WCB/McGraw-Hill
1998
Pg. 55:
Athletes often say “You can play hurt, you can’t play injured.” But the difference is in what pain means to the athlete.
   
HF Boards
OccupySouthBroadSt
05-04-2012, 02:25 PM
Who is injured and who is playing hurt? People need to make the distinction. You can play hurt and still help your team. If you play injured you hurt your team and yourself…especially if concussed bad.
 
Twitter
Mike Antonellis
‏@seadogsradio
Guys play hurt, but should not if they are injured.
4:10 PM - 6 Jan 13
 
Inside the Lakers
TNT analysts riff on the Lakers’ demise
Posted on February 8, 2013 by Mark Medina
Below is a collection from TNT analysts Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and Steve Kerr have to say about the Lakers. There’s plenty.
(...)
Smith on playing with injuries: “You can play hurt. You can’t play injured.”