History LoopholeAbuse / RealLifeSports

* Conference championship games in the FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision, the highest level of competition in NCAA football) exist because of this. In 1987, the NCAA passed a rule for football which stated that conferences with twelve teams or more could split into two divisions and have the top team in each division play a conference championship game which would count in the regular season standings, but would ''not'' count against NCAA limits on the number of regular-season games. The NCAA passed this rule to help lower divisions with sorting out playoff eligibility (something that the top tier didn't have at the time), but the Southeastern Conference (SEC) noticed that the rule didn't say what levels could and could not take advantage of it. The SEC proceeded to add South Carolina and Arkansas to the conference and then promptly invoked the rule to split the SEC into East and West divisions, with the top team in each playing each other in a game to determine the SEC's Conference Champion. At first the SEC's decision was viewed skeptically, because the extra game could potentially cost the top team in the conference a chance at the National Championship should they lose in the conference championship. But after some time, the benefits of such an arrangement (more exposure, and especially more {{money|DearBoy}}) made the other conferences realize the advantages greatly outweighed the drawbacks, and now they're considered a standard part of college football's highest level. So much so that after the Big 12 lost two teams and could no longer hold a conference championship game, the NCAA eventually revised the rule to remove the requirement that a conference have at least twelve teams. And revised it again in 2022, giving conferences full freedom to select the participants in their title games.

* On UsefulNotes/{{Pitt|sburgh}}'s opening drive in the 2021 [[UsefulNotes/PowerFiveConferences Atlantic Coast Conference]] Championship Game, quarterback Kenny Pickett broke out of the pocket and ran the ball. About 20 yards downfield, he then dipped his knee, as if signaling his intent to slide to the ground, and the Wake Forest defense relaxed.[[labelnote:Background]]In college football, a defensive player who makes contact with a ball carrier giving himself up to slide is subject to a 15-yard unnecessary roughness [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootballPenalties penalty]] and possible ejection.[[/labelnote]] Pickett never went to the ground, regaining his stride and blowing by the remaining defenders to complete a 58-yard touchdown run. After the game, which Pitt won, Wake's head coach called Pickett's play "brilliant" and acknowledged there was no rule against what he did, but noted that it placed the defense at a huge disadvantage. Less than a week later, the NCAA issued a rule interpretation declaring that any future attempt at a fake slide would cause the play to be called dead at the spot of the fake (though with no other penalty), which was officially codified in time for the 2022 season.

** Notably, this only covers acts which violate some rule, but where the standard penalty is woefully inadequate. In the case of a player running onto the field to tackle the ballcarrier, entering the field of play after the snap is considered illegal participation and is punishable by a five yard penalty. Normally, it occurs when the offense snaps the ball while the defense is still making subs (which is only allowed if the offense did not make any subs themselves) but here, a five yard penalty would be woefully inadequate to offset the act, so a touchdown was awarded. All acts which are not explicitly illegal are legal.

* Football penalties generally exist to ensure that players follow the rules, but as more than a few players have realized, ain't no rule that says you can't ''intentionally'' bait your opponent into a penalty in order to get a first down and/or a free play[[note]]in a penalty situation, the play still goes forward as long as the ball is snapped before the flag is thrown, but will be called back if the penalty is enforced, so it's a no-risk scenario for the offense: if the play goes well, they can decline the penalty and keep the results of that play, but if it doesn't go their way, they can accept the penalty and anything that happened is undone, even if it's something big like an interception[[/note]], with the only tradeoff being the possibility that it won't work (which can be detrimental in some situations, like if the offense runs out the play clock trying to force an offsides, or if someone messes up the play and the whole thing is thrown off); specifically, the penalties in question usually relate to a defender being offsides or the defense being out of formation/having too many men on the field. Green Bay Packers quarterback [[https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2015/9/29/9412431/aaron-rodgers-hard-count-free-play-packers-chiefs-offsides Aaron Rodgers]] is particularly known for this.

** Interestingly, the UsefulNotes/{{NCAA}} never adopted the new international scoring system; it still uses the old 10-point scale. While NCAA routines are generally lower difficulty than their elite counterparts anyway (this is partly due to the skill level of the competitors and partly due to the rigors of the NCAA schedule -- while an elite gymnast might do four or five major competitions in a year, NCAA gymnasts compete ''weekly'' during the NCAA season, so trying to do an elite-level routine in NCAA would destroy gymnasts' bodies), it still has a tendency to cap difficulty due to the limits on what can be rewarded.

* Football has several rules to cover "Palpably Unfair Acts", which serves as a RuleZero when something blatantly unfair happens that isn't covered by the rules (or if applying the rules strictly would still greatly benefit the offending team). 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. Under the current rules, the referee can award anything he deems necessary to negate the advantage a team gained by cheating overt enough to merit a "Palpably Unfair Act" penalty, up to and including declaring the offending team to have forfeited. (The rules are slightly different in the NFL; referees aren't allowed to call a forfeit, but the NFL Commissioner ''does'' have the authority to [[RetCon overturn a game]], or to scrap it and require a do-over, if a particularly egregious Palpably Unfair Act takes place. Commissioners are understandably hesitant so this clause has never been exercised, but it is on the books in the event that something happens that's so egregious that they have no choice but to correct it in this fashion.)

** Interestingly, the UsefulNotes/{{NCAA}} never adopted the new international scoring system; it still uses the old 10-point scale. While NCAA routines are generally lower difficulty than their elite counterparts anyway (this is partly due to the skill level of the competitors and partly due to the rigors of the NCAA schedule -- while an elite gymnasts might do four or five major competitions in a year, NCAA gymnasts compete ''weekly'' during the NCAA season, so trying to do an elite-level routine in NCAA would destroy gymnasts' bodies), it still has a tendency to cap difficulty due to the limits on what can be rewarded.

* Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots since 2000, has a reputation for an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the rules. One famous example was in a 2019 game against the Jets, where the Pats committed a delay of game foul followed by a false start to burn an extra minute off the clock before a 4th-quarter punt. Hilariously, other coaches took note, and the Pats found themselves on the other side of this in the playoffs as the Tennessee Titans used the same tactic to burn an extra couple of minutes off the clock (New England ultimately lost the game and was eliminated, albeit not really on the basis of this play). The loophole was then patched out for the 2020 season.

* Vancouver 2010 Olympics: [[https://web.archive.org/web/20100227083210/http://www.examiner.com/x-24799-Dallas-Dance-Examiner~y2010m2d24-Olympics-ice-dancing-controversial-despite-well-deserved-gold-for-the-Canadians-slideshow Ain't no rule in ice dancing that you can't put synthetic rope belts into your costumes to help with lifts]] (this is the same Russian pair with the [[UnfortunateImplications "Aboriginal"]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtXWE1CfbcM costumes]]). As commentator Scott Hamilton noted, there undoubtedly ''will be'' in the future.

* Vancouver 2010 Olympics: [[http://www.examiner.com/x-24799-Dallas-Dance-Examiner~y2010m2d24-Olympics-ice-dancing-controversial-despite-well-deserved-gold-for-the-Canadians-slideshow 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 [[UnfortunateImplications "Aboriginal"]] costumes). As commentator Scott Hamilton noted, there undoubtedly ''will be'' in the future.

* The Webley-Fosberry "Automatic Revolver", a vaguely ClockPunk-like pistol that combined the cylinder of a revolver with the recoil-powered repeating action of a semi-automatic pistol, was in high demand as a target weapon because its rate of fire was higher than any conventional revolver... until an ObviousRulePatch declared that it was a semi-automatic pistol and therefore not tournament-legal in revolver-only events. Since [[CoolButInefficient it wasn't actually a very good firearm in most respects]], sales pretty much evaporated and not many were actually made. If not for a brief appearance as a plot point in ''Literature/TheMalteseFalcon'' it would be forgotten except by gun collectors.

* The Basketball Tournament, a summer men's event in the US with a $1 million winner-take-all purse, realized it had unintentionally created an opportunity for this. For background, TBT uses a unique game-ending procedure called the Elam Ending. At the first dead ball with 4 minutes or less remaining in the fourth quarter, the game clock is turned off, and a "target score" is set by adding 8 points to the score of the leading team (or tied teams). The game continues with no game clock but with the shot clock still active, and the first team to match or surpass the target score wins. Thanks to a fan with whom the ending's inventor and namesake Nick Elam interacted on a message board, the organizers realized that there was an incentive for a team to commit a foul in one specific situation—when the fouling team could reach the target score with a free throw or 2-point basket, but its opponent needed a three-pointer. Effective with the 2020 event, a foul that would normally result in bonus free throws gives the non-fouling team one free throw and possession during the Elam Ending.

* On UsefulNotes/{{Pitt|sburgh}}'s opening drive in the 2021 [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootballPower5Conferences Atlantic Coast Conference]] Championship Game, quarterback Kenny Pickett broke out of the pocket and ran the ball. About 20 yards downfield, he then dipped his knee, as if signaling his intent to slide to the ground, and the Wake Forest defense relaxed.[[labelnote:Background]]In college football, a defensive player who makes contact with a ball carrier giving himself up to slide is subject to a 15-yard unnecessary roughness [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootballPenalties penalty]] and possible ejection.[[/labelnote]] Pickett never went to the ground, regaining his stride and blowing by the remaining defenders to complete a 58-yard touchdown run. After the game, which Pitt won, Wake's head coach called Pickett's play "brilliant" and acknowledged there was no rule against what he did, but noted that it placed the defense at a huge disadvantage. Less than a week later, the NCAA issued a rule interpretation declaring that any future attempt at a fake slide would cause the play to be called dead at the spot of the fake (though with no other penalty), which was officially codified in time for the 2022 season.

* When the Baltimore Colts moved the team out of the city on March 29, 1984, they did it at two o' clock in the morning by loading everything the team had into fifteen moving vans and bolting for Indianapolis. The reason was that the Maryland Senate had passed an "eminent domain" bill two days prior that would have allowed the city of Baltimore to force the Colts to stay. Indeed, the Maryland House of Delegates also passed the bill that day and Maryland Governor Harry Hughs signed it into law, but since the Colts were already gone by the time the bill was signed Baltimore had no one to enforce it on.

* Football ''loves'' loophole abuse, and several plays ''depend'' on it. Generally, only the most blatant exploits are the ones that get [[ObviousRulePatch patched]]; if an exploit is more trouble to patch than it's worth, or doesn't really cause too much harm to the game for whatever reason, it will become part of the game. 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 (even an ineligible receiver; the rules specifically prevent ''forward'' passes and ''forward'' handoffs to ineligibles). 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.

** Before 1976, no rules said that a UsefulNotes/FormulaOne car couldn't have [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34 six wheels]]. The rules wouldn't actually be changed to mandate four wheels until 1982, by which time Tyrrell had long since abandoned the experiment.
** At a UsefulNotes/FormulaOne 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 [[TakeThat Ferrari, who have a history for being under fire from rule-makers over the decades]], [[TakingYouWithMe wasn't about to let them get away with it either]].

** A once-common form of loophole abuse unrelated to the technical regulations: in countries where tobacco advertising was banned (of which there were quite a few), teams sponsored by tobacco companies (of which there were also quite a few) would skirt the ban in all sorts of ways, from replacing the company's name with the team or driver name, to replacing it with similar-sounding words (Jordan's "Buzzin' Hornets" being an iconic example), to just strategically blanking out a few letters. When F1 banned tobacco advertising entirely, Ferrari kept their Marlboro sponsorship and just replaced the logo with a giant barcode, but eventually that was banned as well. Ferrari later turned to Phillip Morris' initiative Mission Winnow as well (with [=McLaren=] joining in with the British American Tobacco's "A Better Tomorrow" campaign, which also explicitly advertises alternative nicotine products such as vaping products and nicotine pouches in certain races), which also drew the ire of regulators in some countries.

* The "Spanish style" or "Erausquin style" in Olympic javelin, i.e. throwing the javelin as if it was a discus. The grip is inverse, and the thrower spins a couple of times like a ballet dancer before ejecting the javelin. Its basis is ''barra vasca'' ("Basque stick"), one of several similar Spanish throwing moves used in ancient war javelining. Basque athlete Félix Erausquin invented the style to break the Finnish dominance in javelin in 1956 and was imitated by the other Spanish throwers. The rules didn't specify that the javelin must be thrown overarm, and the "Erausquin style" appeared to be immensely effective: Erausquin, who was 48 at the time, threw the javelin 81.76 m (at a time when the world record was 81.66) and 24-year-old Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo reached '''112''' meters. Unfortunately it was also notoriously inaccurate - and dangerous: only three throws in four actually landed on the sector, and one javelin landed on the grandstand. The style was quickly prohibited before the Melbourne Olympics 1956 and the results were never recorded as official.
* After failing to qualify for the shot put competition in the 2011 World Athletics Championship, American Samoa athlete Sogelau Tuvalu then lined up for the 100 meters heats, taking advantage of the fact that there was no qualification standard for that event (The IAAF had introduced the rule so that smaller nations could send somebody to represent them, and therefore take part in the games). He finished in 15.66 seconds, five seconds behind the heat's winner.

* 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. This tactic resulted in the ''only'' perfect-scoring ice dance in the history of the Olympics: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2zbbN4OL98 Torvill and Dean's "Boléro"]]. "Boléro" itself is [[EpicRocking 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, the dancers spent the first 18 seconds of the song kneeling, with their skates off the ice. 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.

** NCAA basketball made the three mandatory for men's play in 1986–87 and women the next season. They didn't wait anywhere near as long as the NBA to introduce the free-throw change, but still didn't make it 1990–91 (for both).

** Interestingly, the UsefulNotes/{{NCAA}} never adopted the new international scoring system. It still uses the old 10-point scale.