Loophole Abuse/Real Life/Sports

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Loophole Abuse from the wide world of sports.

Baseball

  • To score a run in baseball, you have to tag home base. Practically everyone thinks of this as tagging the base with your foot, and that therefore if the catcher is already in the way you can't really tag home. But there ain't no rule that says you have to use your feet. During a college baseball game, Fordham player Brian Konwnacki took this to almost gravity defying levels when he literally jumps over the catcher to get to home plate and makes a flawless flip onto home plate to score a run.
    • Also, from that same clip, ain't no rule that says you can't steal third base when no one's looking. (About 1:05 in the clip.)
    • Or home, for that matter.
  • There may be a rule in baseball and softball about teammates assisting a runner, but there's not one about opponents assisting a runner...which led to a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when college softballer Sara Tucholsky hit the only home run of her career, but tore her ACL rounding first. Two members of the opposing team carried her around the bases so her home run would count. (More complete summary at the Real Life CMOH page)
    • While it definitely qualifies as a CMOH, the umpire was actually wrong. There was no rule that would have prevented her teammates from assisting her around the base path, as it was technically a home run as soon as the ball cleared the wall, which used a different, reduced set of base running rules. (Mainly that you're still out if you pass a runner ahead of you). Still, it makes a better story the way it happened.
      • Also, if somebody hits an actual bona fide homerun then they're quite likely to want to run the bases, whether it technically has to be done or not. It probably wouldn't feel right, otherwise.


Cricket

Just to note, loophole abuse is not cricket.

  • The Underarm bowling incident of 1981 caused a major Cricket scandal when a one day international between Australia and New Zealand came down to the last ball of the New Zealand innings. With New Zealand able to tie the game by scoring a Six, the Australian Captain realized that Underarm Bowling (a completely anachronistic practice of rolling the ball along the ground instead of the usual bounce method) had not been stipulated against in the tournament rules. While a rolled ball is easy to put into play, it is nearly impossible to score a Six, therefore robbing New Zealand of any chance to win the game. While Australia won it was widely viewed in both countries as ungentlemanly cowardice. As a direct result of the incident, underarm bowling was banned in limited overs cricket by the International Cricket Council as "not within the spirit of the game".
  • An English amateur cricket team barred from entering the dining room of the hotel in which they were staying on the grounds that they were not wearing ties. To his credit, the maitre'd apparently took them reappearing wearing properly-knotted ties but no shirts or trousers in the spirit in which it was intended.
  • There was no rule in cricket about bodyline bowling, where the fielding team repeatedly bowls fast short deliveries aimed at the batsman's body, whilst setting a field with a high number of close legside catchers in the hope of catching deflections when the batsman defends himself. The England cricket team used this method to counteract the success of the great Australian batsman Sir Donald Bradman during the 1932-33 Ashes. After the infamous tour bodyline was effectively banned by changing the Laws of Cricket to limit the number of fielders allowed behind square leg, and adding that "The bowling of fast short pitched balls is dangerous and unfair if the umpire at the bowler's end considers that by their repetition and taking into account their length, height and direction they are likely to inflict physical injury on the striker."
  • Reader's Digest once printed this apocryphal story about a Cricket Rules match somewhere in England:

The captain of the batting team was facing the first ball of the innings, with the opposing captain as wicketkeeper. The ball was almost a wide down the leg side, but broke back viciously and bowled him out. The astonished batsman exclaimed, "Well, I declare!" The opposing captain overheard and took him at his word, so the innings was closed at one for naught. After the teams changed round, the first bowler began running round and round the boundary with no apparent intention of stopping. When asked what was going on, the captain of the fielding side explained to the umpire, "There is no rule limiting the length of the bowler's run. He's the local marathon champion, and he's running until bad light stops play". The match was drawn with one ball bowled.

Olympics

  • Eddie the Eagle utilized a loophole allowing every nation to send a representative for every sport. At the time, nobody else from the UK entered for ski jumping, so Eddie did and was legally allowed to compete. Obvious Rule Patch followed requiring all competitors to have won an international competition previously or be in a certain top percentage in their event.
  • At one of the Winter Olympics, Canadian Skiers didn't know there was a rule against "tobogganing", or slowing yourself using your bottom. When they did this, other athletes immediately complained to the judges, who opened that year's rulebook to cite against this maneuver --- and discovered it had been accidentally omitted...
    • Norse Law used to work like this. Each year the laws were read out (about 1/3rd a year) and if a law was left out and no one made a point of it that law was removed.
  • Vancouver 2010 Olympics: Ain't no rule in ice dancing that you can't put belts into your costumes to help with lifts (this is the same Russian pair with the "Aboriginal" costumes). As commentator Scott Hamilton noted, there undoubtedly will be in the future.
    • Likewise, in the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, ain't no rule you can't prolong your dance by not touching the ice with your skates for the first eighteen seconds. Said loophole abuse resulted in the only perfect-scoring ice dance in the history of the Olympics: Torvill and Dean's "Boléro".
      • To clarify, "Boléro" itself is 17 minutes long. They managed to cut the song down to 4:28, 18 seconds longer than the Olympic rules. Since actual timing starts when the skates touch the ice, they went with Loophole Abuse.
      • Needless to say, this is now against the rules. Though ice dance in general is prone to teams creating unusual moves, where there ain't no rule, leading to next season there being a rule.
  • Another Olympics one: Canadian Ross Rebagliati was stripped of his gold medal when traces of marijuana were found in his system. However, marijuana wasn't actually on the banned substances list, so they gave it back to him. Then again, marijuana isn't exactly a performance enhancing drug.

American Football

  • In an effort to speed up the games, the NCAA changed the clock rule on kickoffs, causing it to begin running when kicked instead of when it was touched. The University of Wisconsin scored a TD with 23 seconds left in the first half, and deliberately went offsides on the subsequent kickoff. Each time the play was run, they would be penalized and have to do it again, but it would take 5 seconds off the clock that were not replaced.
  • The downs system of American football and basketball's shot clock were added when teams took advantage of the lack of such a rule to simply indefinitely keep possession of the ball. Sometimes these "keep away" tactics got really bad; on November 22, 1950, a basketball game between the Fort Wayne Pistons and Minneapolis Lakers ended in a score of 19-18. Another 1950 game went for six overtimes, with each team only taking one shot in each extra period.
  • In American High School Football the A-11 offense exploited a loophole in scrimmage kick formations that allowed all players to be numbered as eligible receivers, thus disguising who the actual receivers were and expanding the number of plays the defense had to defend against from 250 to 16,000. Cue Obvious Rule Patch two years later (though Texas and Massachusetts use NCAA rules, which never allowed the thing in the first place.)
  • At the time of the infamous "Snowplow Game" in 1982 between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, there really wasn't a rule you couldn't plow a section of the field in football before a field goal. Needless to say, after the game there was one. This game, by the way, is the real reason why Dolphins fans gloat so much over New England's failure to complete a perfect season.
    • It didn't hurt that Don Shula was a member of the NFL's rules committee. This probably produced his familiarity with the rules that allowed him to see that there ain't no rule that says you can't fool the defense into thinking the play's over by pretending to spike the ball to stop the clock, and then pass the ball to an eligible receiver. And, it's still a legal play.
    • Football loves Loophole Abuse, and several plays depend on it. There's no rule that the quarterback has to be the player to receive the snap, giving rise to "Direct Snap" plays that give the ball from the center to the running back with no hand-off. There are rules that state that only certain positions are eligible receivers, but there's no rule that says they can't then pass the ball to someone behind them. There's a rule that says that the kickoff must be kicked at least ten yards or touch a member of the receiving team in order for the kicking team to take possession without ending the play, but there's no rule that says you can't kick the ball directly at one of the close members of the receiving team and get the ball when it inevitably bounces off him.
    • Back when Carlisle Indian Industrial School had a football team in the early 20th century, they were notorious for exploiting the holes in the rulebook. One tactic was to have leather football patches sewn onto every uniform so that every player appeared to be carrying the ball, since there wasn't a rule prohibiting it. They were stopped by Harvard, who when they played Carlisle presented game balls that had been dyed a deep crimson color (since there wasn't a rule against that either) to neutralize the trick.
    • Football has several rules to cover "Palpably Unfair Acts," which serves as a Rule Zero when something blatantly unfair happens that isn't covered by the rules. It isn't applied often, though. Amusingly, the first time someone ran off the sidelines to tackle a runner, everyone agreed that the referee could award a touchdown even though the rule patch didn't exist yet.
  • There ain't no rule against some kinds of faking in football.

Motor Sports

  • Race car driver Smokey Yunick was so notorious for this that some automotive journalists call this trope in auto racing "Yunicking the Rules." For example, when NASCAR rules tried to force more pit stops by limiting the size of the gas tank, Smokey replaced his fuel lines with exhaust pipe, adding several more gallons that technically were not part of the fuel tank. "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'." is practically the unofficial slogan of NASCAR; Yunick just took that to the natural extreme.
    • This is why NASCAR has a blanket rule "Actions detrimental to stock car racing" which they cite with pretty much every infraction anyway.
  • Formula One also has many example of creative interpretation of the rules, especially getting around the rules against 'moveable aerodynamic devices' - over the years teams have tried flexible wings and floors that bend in the wind and reduce drag; the Brabham team built the infamous 'Fan Car' where a so-called "Cooling Fan" created a vacuum under the car. In 1981 minimum ride height rules were introduced, to be policed by random checks in the pits. Brabham's Gordon Murray designed a hydraulic suspension system that raised the car in the pit lane (when it was being checked) and lowered it down again on the track. Lotus built the Type 88 double-chassis car, where the top chassis would lower down onto the track at speed creating ground effect suction. Ironically it was the more ingenious Lotus that ended up being banned. More recently in 2009 Brawn GP got round the rule specifying a 'single deck' rear aerodynamic diffuser by incorporating the mandatory rear crash structure into the diffuser, thus generating more rear downforce. In 2010 McLaren built a duct into their car that the driver could operate with his elbow (!); when used on a straight the duct stalled the rear wing and reduced drag.
    • That trick was banned by FIA in the 2012 rules by an Obvious Rule Patch- which forced the drivers to keep the hands on the steering wheel at all times. So Mercedes (the successor of Brawn) kept the duct but made it so it could be activated from the wheel, using the same button that already existed for the DRS system.
    • Before 1976, no rules said that a Formula One could not have six wheels.
    • At a Formula One race in Long Beach in 1982, Ferrari used a super-wide rear wing on their cars because the rules explicitly stated that all teams could have rear wings made of two aerodynamic elements, so instead of putting them one atop the other, they put the individual flaps of the wing side-by-side to create a wing twice as wide as regulations allowed. The Ferraris didn't place well and were even disqualified afterwards, but Ferrari didn't introduce that wing to win: all the other teams were cheating the regulations in various creative ways and Ferrari, who has a history for being under fire by rulesmakers over the decades, wasn't about to let them get away with it either.
    • Played straight, then brutally averted for Tyrrell in 1984. Formula One rules dictate a minimum weight all cars must meet, but at the time it was common to find ways to reduce the weight of the car while on the track (and unable to be weighed,) such as water cooled brakes that were fed by a reservoir, which would gradually empty throughout the race, shedding weight, and topped up to pass inspection. Tyrrell was the only team with a normally aspirated engine that year, every other team having the dominant turbocharged monsters, and were only earning points due to luck and the skill of their drivers (Martin Brundle and Stefan Bellof.) However, this gave them some leverage against the turbo-running teams, as fuel tank sizes were to be cut to 195 liters (from 220L) in 1985 to curtail the power of the turbo cars. Every turbo team would vote against it (as the turbo engines guzzled fuel,) but to scrap it, they needed a unanimous decision, leaving Tyrrell (with the vastly more efficient n/a engines) in the way, leverage they were more than willing to use. Tyrrell used a water injection system for their engines, clawing back a little of the power deficit, that would be topped up before the race ended with two gallons of water, and 140 lbs of lead shot. The FIA, after inspecting the system, eventually ruled that the water in the tank consisted of 27.5% aromatics, constituted to be an (illegal) addition fuel source, as well as illegally taking on addition fuel during the race, illegal fuel (the water/lead mix,) illegal fuel lines (the lines to the engine,) and improperly secured ballast (the lead shot.) As a result, the FIA excluded Tyrrell from the championship that year, and retroactively disqualified them from all races that year. However, additional testing showed the water carried well below 1% aromatics, and thus well within the rules. Tyrrell also argued that the rules required that ballast be fixed as to require tools to remove, which they felt was the case for the lead shot trapped in the tank. As such, they went to appeal. In an unbelievably draconian move, the FIA ignored the test results, changed the charges to fuel in the water and illegal ballast, and then added an entirely new charge of illegal vents in the undertray, claiming they violated rules preventing the use of ground effect, but where eventually found to be of no aerodynamic purpose. Oh, and the exclusion was upheld, and a further ban from the final three race was instituted, incurring an additional fine for missing those races. This ended up being a double-whammy for Tyrrell, as the turbo teams were now free to amend the rules as they wished, while Tyrrell scrambled to secure a deal for turbo engines for 1985, and also lost all their points for the championship, losing the subsidized travel costs their points haul would have earned them, an addition cost.
    • Another classic rule bend came from F1's near cousin Indycar (back before the 'Split' and today's spec series, when teams often built their own cars). 1994 Indy 500 rules allowed pushrod engines higher turbo boost levels, ostensibly to encourage engines based on road car engines. Except nothing in the rule book actually specified the need for a stock block, so Penske Racing commissioned a custom Ilmor-Mercedes pushod engine that pumped out 200 hp more than rivals and walked the race.
  • Texas oilman, race car driver and engineer Jim Hall was the creator of Chapparal Cars and created the legendary Can-Am monster, the 2J. At the time there were no rules that prohibited a Can-Am racing car from having more than one engine, so he took a Chevy V-8 and powered the boxy 2J's rear wheels with it and took a snowmobile engine to power a set of rear-mounted fans to suck the car to the ground with. When it wasn't broken down it was an amazing car, and when it wasn't broken down or winning, it was being banned.

Other

  • One of the most famous sports examples was the notorious 1994 Barbados vs Grenada soccer game. Barbados needed to win by 2 clear goals to advance to the tournament final, but were only winning 2-1 in the final minutes of the game. The tournament rules stated that a draw would go to sudden death extra time, and the winner would be deemed to have won by two goals. After Grenada scored late in the game, the Barbados team realized they'd be unlikely to score as Grenada would play defensively since they didn't need to win, only to not lose by more than a goal. So Barbados fired the ball into their own net, levelling the score, then clustered around the Grenadan net so they couldn't do the same thing. Time runs out, game goes to sudden death extra time where Barbados wins.
  • John Hopoate, a player in Australia's National Rugby League, became notorious for using a rather unorthodox move to make other players more likely to fumble during tackles. Turns out there wasn't any rule saying you aren't allowed to jam your fingers up another player's butt, and in the end the NRL had to declare him guilty of conduct unbecoming the game before they could get rid of him.
  • Another real life example: George Burns and Harpo Marx were once playing golf on a very hot day, and decided to take their shirts off. A nearby group complained, and the club manager came out to inform them that club rules required them to wear shirts on the course. A little while later, he received another complaint - this time they were playing without pants. When he went out to tell them to put pants on, they asked to see the rulebook on that - and it turned out that there was no rule requiring club members to wear pants on the course, because nobody had ever thought to need it.
    • Golf is a minefield for loophole-lovers. The general rule is, if you try to use the Rules Of Golf to your advantage, you better make Damn Sure you know What They Are. Because your opponent will. (and in any important case, one can always drag out the Book and/or the official.) Excellent fictional example: "The Foursome", by "Troon McAllister".
    • While most cities have a general "no indecent exposure" law which makes it illegal to be naked in public, there ain't no rule against riding the subway in your underwear.
  • This is an essential part of nine-ball pool. The balls are numbered from 1 to 9, the rules state that you must strike the lowest-numbered ball on the table, and the winner is the player who pots the 9-ball. This implies that the intent is to first pot the 1-ball, then the 2-ball, then the 3-ball, and so on until you pot the 9-ball and win. However, there Ain't No Rule saying the balls must be potted in order, so play often involves striking the lowest-numbered ball into the 9-ball and attempting to pot the 9-ball, or into any other ball to keep shooting.
    • This is also used as a tactical move when you can't easily pot any ball by hitting the lowest first. If you don't hit the lowest ball, the other player can place the cue ball anywhere on the table which usually means a setup for an easy shot. If you do hit the lowest but don't pot anything, the other player will have to shoot from where the cue ball ends up, which ideally is in a position where they will foul and you'll get the cue ball back anywhere on the table. In some games you can get the players making incredibly accurate finesse shots one after the other trying to get the other to foul.
  • In casinos offering Blackjack, it has always been prohibited to use any device to count or track the cards. People eventually found ways to count cards in their heads (and won huge amounts of money doing it). Since using your brain to gain an advantage in a game isn't illegal, casinos can't have you arrested for cheating. But since a casino is private property they can decline to accept any wager and can therefore boot out anybody suspected of counting cards.
    • This sometimes turns into getting booted if you're doing "suspiciously" well, so even if you aren't counting cards and just happen to be phenomenally lucky, be prepared to be shown the door.
  • In combat sports, a title cannot change hands unless it is contested within its weight class - if either competitor is overweight, even if the challenger wins, the title remains with the champion. Several champions, expecting to lose, have come in overweight, lost, and retained the title. Paulo Filho, then of WEC, comes to mind.
    • The World Boxing Association (one of the Big 4 sanctioning bodies) since closed this loophole with Rule 2.5, part of which states that if the champion fails to make weight, he loses his title "on the scales" regardless of the match's outcome.
  • National Hockey League coach Roger Neilson was infamous for his knowledge of league rules and loopholes, to the point that he became known as "Rule Book Roger." He once put a defenseman in goal for a penalty shot (goalies can't leave the net to bodycheck a shooter off the puck, but defensemen can), forced nearly continuous penalties to relieve pressure on his team (no matter how many penalties a team has, only two players of five can be in the penalty box), and had his goalies leave their sticks in the goalmouth when pulled for an extra attacker, to block attempted empty-net goals. There are rules against all of these now.
    • To elaborate: The current rule is that taking a Too Many Men On The Ice penalty, or other penalties intended to disrupt the flow of play, in the last two minutes of regulation or at any point in overtime while two men down results in a penalty shot instead of a minor penalty.
  • Timothy Ferriss, in his book The Four Hour Work Week, tells a story about how he won a kickboxing championship using a method that he described as Loophole Abuse. The rules said that a player who leaves the ring automatically loses, and the competitors weigh in one day before they actually have to fight. So he dehydrated himself (with the help of a doctor) to temporarily "lose" a significant amount of weight during the day before the weigh-in and regain it, and then proceeded to shove all of his less massive opponents out of the ring.
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