History ObviousRulePatch / Sports

*** However, the 2026 World Cup, to be played in North America, will feature a record 48 teams, with an original plan for 16 groups of three teams each... making it ''impossible'' for all the teams in a group to play simultaneously. FIFA has suggested that draws may be prevented during the group stage by the use of penalty shootouts...which would introduce the possibility of a team losing a penalty shootout ''on purpose'' to eliminate a rival. The possibility of this happening was removed in 2023, when FIFA announced that the 2026 World Cup would feature 12 groups of four, with the top two and eight best third-placed team advancing to the elimination rounds, citing satisfaction with the group stage in 2022, where only three of the 16 teams progressing to the knock-out stage were known with a game left, fewer than usual.
** In each World Cup held between 1934 and 1954[[note]]the teams in the 1930 World Cup were invited[[/note]], at least one team qualified without playing a game, due to the other teams in their group withdrawing. This was changed in time for the 1958 edition so that only the host country and, until 2002, defending champions qualified automatically.

** As a batter, you can't strike out by hitting foul balls ''except'' if that foul ball results from a bunt. Bunts are considered strike three solely to prevent batters from wearing down the opposing pitchers (a tactic that has actually been used in the past), as bunting the ball is easier than swinging and hitting it foul.

** This is also the reason that the "lunge rule" on women's floor exercise was eliminated. For many years, gymnasts were allowed to take a choreographed step, or "lunge", out of their passes on floor exercise; it was meant to be for the sake of presentation, but in reality, the exact line between a controlled, intentional lunge out of a good landing and a bounce or step on landing being covered as a lunge was not always clear, especially for judges making scoring decisions in real time. The rule was eliminated in 2009[[note]]albeit not without controversy, as the lunge also helped to alleviate the impact on gymnasts' legs from landing, increasing the risk of repetitive-stress injuries -- especially since female gymnasts, unlike their male counterparts, also can't land with their feet apart (another way of lessening the impact) without incurring form deductions[[/note]]. To get around this, some gymnasts will do jumps out of their landings to avoid having to hit a true stick, but since jumps are actual ''elements'' which have requirements and can be deducted if done incorrectly, the governing body has generally seen this as acceptable.

** This is also the reason that the "lunge rule" on women's floor exercise was eliminated. For many years, gymnasts were allowed to take a choreographed step, or "lunge", out of their passes on floor exercise; it was meant to be for the sake of presentation, but in reality, the exact line between a controlled, intentional lunge out of a good landing and a bounce or step on landing being covered as a lunge was not always clear, especially for judges making scoring decisions in real time. The rule was eliminated in 2009. (Since then, some gymnasts will do a jump out of landings to avoid having to hit a true stick, but jumps are much more difficult and are also evaluated for deductions, so it's not quite the same thing.)

** In 2023, the NFL passed the '''Brock Purdy Rule''', allowing teams to have a third quarterback available on game day in case their first two quarterbacks are either injured, suspended, or ejected from the game. This was in response to the [=49ers=] losing both of their quarterbacks to injuries during the 2022 NFC Championship Game. The rule comes with caveats to avoid further exploitation: a team must have two other quarterbacks on the 53-man roster in order to use the emergency QB, and said first two quarterbacks must be on the 48-man gameday "dressed" roster. Originally, there was also a caveat that an emergency QB must be on the team's active 53-man roster rather than being a practice squad elevation, but this was removed in a secondary patch a year later because it was found that the requirement to set aside a roster spot for a player who might never play made the rule too burdensome for most teams to actually use; starting in 2024, teams will be able to elevate a practice squad quarterback to emergency quarterback status (as part of this, elevation to emergency quarterback won't count against a player's number of total elevations for the season, but does still count against the team's total number of practice squad elevations per week); to counter possible abuse of this rule[[note]]the main fear was that teams might e.g. use the spot for a QB/tight end hybrid player and then play that player as a tight end[[/note]], the NFL added a new caveat saying that the emergency quarterback can only come in if neither of the original quarterbacks is able to play, and if one of the main-roster quarterbacks is later cleared to return, the emergency QB goes back to the bench.

** In 2023, the NFL passed the '''Brock Purdy Rule''', allowing teams to have a third quarterback available on game day in case their first two quarterbacks are either injured, suspended, or ejected from the game. This was in response to the [=49ers=] losing both of their quarterbacks to injuries during the 2022 NFC Championship Game. The rule comes with caveats to avoid further exploitation: a team must have two other quarterbacks on the 53-man roster in order to use the emergency QB, said first two quarterbacks must be on the 48-man gameday "dressed" roster, and if either of the original quarterbacks is cleared to return to play, the team has to pull the emergency quarterback and put the main roster QB in. Originally, there was also a caveat that an emergency QB must be on the team's active 53-man roster rather than being a practice squad elevation, but this was removed in a secondary patch a year later because it was found that the requirement to set aside a roster spot for a player who might never play made the rule too burdensome for most teams to actually use; starting in 2024, teams will be able to elevate a practice squad quarterback to emergency quarterback status (as part of this, elevation to emergency quarterback won't count against a player's number of total elevations for the season, but does still count against the team's total number of practice squad elevations per week).

** With the 2002 establishment of the Houston Texans, the NFL had 32 teams, so they realigned to 4 divisions per conference each containing 4 teams and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_regular_season#Current_formula developed a scheduling formula so that each team played every other team at every stadium within a 8-year span]], and road/home games set on an alphabetical pairing, e.g. teams scheduled to play the NFC North (Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings) would travel to Chicago and Detroit and host Green Bay and Minnesota or vice-versa. This became problematic in the 2008-09 season, when the AFC East (Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Jets) was scheduled to play both the AFC West (Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Oakland Raiders[[note]]now Las Vegas Raiders[[/note]], San Diego Chargers[[note]]now Los Angeles Chargers[[/note]]) and NFC West (Arizona Cardinals, St. Louis Rams[[note]]now Los Angeles Rams[[/note]], San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks), with the Patriots and Jets scheduled to travel to Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle all in the same season. Starting in the 2010-11 season, the scheduling formula was amended so that teams scheduled to play the AFC West and/or NFC West would only play 1 West Coast team and 1 team closer to the Midwest for their road games, e.g. teams traveling to Oakland[[note]]now Las Vegas[[/note]] would also travel to Denver, and teams traveling to Seattle would also travel to St. Louis. (However, this became a bit muddier on the NFC side after the Rams moved back to Los Angeles, as with three teams in the NFC West playing on the West Coast [[note]]San Fransisco, Seattle, Los Angeles; the only exception is Arizona[[/note]], there's no way to avoid having some teams play two West Coast games.)

** "Icing" refers to the practice of a defending team flinging the puck all the way down the ice and forcing the opponent to go fetch it. They patched this by blowing the whistle immediately after the opponent touches it after it crosses the far goal line, bringing the face-off back to the defending team's zone. This slowed the game down a lot when a team was killing a penalty, so they re-patched it to allow shorthanded teams to ice the puck.[[note]]Except in U.S. youth hockey (i.e., 14-and-under), where icing is prohibited at all times, even when shorthanded.[[/note]] More recent rule changes tweak it to prevent players from crashing into the boards chasing after the puck, so now you don't have to physically collect the puck for icing to be called (resulting in a rule that fans, players, and even officials aren't entirely sure of). And another recent change prevents teams from substituting players after they ice the puck -- and they had to patch ''that'' immediately to delay television timeouts from occurring and giving the tired players a reprieve. (You can call a timeout, but you only have one for the whole game.)

*** In the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs series between the San Jose Sharks and the Vegas Golden Knights, Sharks captain Joe Pavelski took a hit up high, fell to the ground, and took a severe injury from the fall. The Vegas player was assessed a five-minute major penalty and ejected from the game, despite the fact that the injury was less about the hit and more about the unfortunate way that Pavelski fell. The Sharks proceeded to score a whopping four goals during that five minute power play and ultimately won the series in overtime. The end result is that the refs are now allowed to use video review to confirm or reduce major penalties.

** In 2023, the NFL passed the '''Brock Purdy Rule''', allowing teams to have a third quarterback available on game day in case their first two quarterbacks are either injured, suspended, or ejected from the game. This was in response to the [=49ers=] losing all of their quarterbacks to injuries during the 2022 NFC Championship Game. The rule comes with caveats to avoid further exploitation: the emergency QB must be on the team's active 53-man roster and can't be shuttled off-and-on the team's practice squad, a team must have two other quarterbacks on the 53-man roster in order to use the emergency QB, and said first two quarterbacks must be on the 48-man gameday "dressed" roster.

** With the 2002 establishment of the Houston Texans, the NFL had 32 teams, so they realigned to 4 divisions per conference each containing 4 teams and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_regular_season#Current_formula developed a scheduling formula so that each team played every other team at every stadium within a 8-year span]], and road/home games set on an alphabetical pairing, e.g. teams scheduled to play the NFC North (Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings) would travel to Chicago and Detroit and host Green Bay and Minnesota or vice-versa. This became problematic in the 2008-09 season, when the AFC East (Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Jets) was scheduled to play both the AFC West (Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Oakland Raiders[[note]]now Las Vegas Raiders[[/note]], San Diego Chargers[[note]]now Los Angeles Chargers[[/note]]) and NFC West (Arizona Cardinals, St. Louis Rams[[note]]now Los Angeles Rams[[/note]], San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks), with the Patriots and Jets scheduled to travel to Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle all in the same season. Starting in the 2010-11 season, the scheduling formula was amended so that teams scheduled to play the AFC West and/or NFC West would only play 1 West Coast team and 1 team closer to the Midwest for their road games, e.g. teams traveling to Oakland[[note]]now Las Vegas[[/note]] would also travel to Denver, and teams traveling to Seattle would also travel to St. Louis. (However, this became a bit muddier on the NFC side after the Rams moved back to Los Angeles, as with three teams in the NFC West playing on the West Coast [[note]]San Fransisco, Seattle, Los Angeles; the only exception is Arizona[[/note]] , there's no way to avoid having some teams play two West Coast games.)

** With the 2002 establishment of the Houston Texans, the NFL had 32 teams, so they realigned to 4 divisions per conference each containing 4 teams and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_regular_season#Current_formula developed a scheduling formula so that each team played every other team at every stadium within a 8-year span]], and road/home games set on an alphabetical pairing, e.g. teams scheduled to play the NFC North (Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings) would travel to Chicago and Detroit and host Green Bay and Minnesota or vice-versa. This became problematic in the 2008-09 season, when the AFC East (Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Jets) was scheduled to play both the AFC West (Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Oakland Raiders[[note]]now Las Vegas Raiders[[/note]], San Diego Chargers[[note]]now Los Angeles Chargers[[/note]]) and NFC West (Arizona Cardinals, St. Louis Rams[[note]]now Los Angeles Rams[[/note]], San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks), with the Patriots and Jets scheduled to travel to Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle all in the same season. Starting in the 2010-11 season, the scheduling formula was amended so that teams scheduled to play the AFC West and/or NFC West would only play 1 West Coast team and 1 team closer to the Midwest for their road games, e.g. teams traveling to Oakland[[note]]now Las Vegas[[/note]] would also travel to Denver, and teams traveling to Seattle would also travel to St. Louis[[note]]now Los Angeles[[/note]].

* The women's doubles event in badminton during the 2012 Olympics saw two matches in which both pairs were blatantly playing poorly so that they would get a better draw in the next round, which lead to all of them being disqualified. To avoid a repeat of this, the next Olympics saw the runners-up in each group in all events being assigned a pair by a random draw (save for not being drawn against the winner of the group they were in).

** In the Six Nations tournament teams score 4 points for a win, 2 points for a draw, but can also score one bonus point for scoring four try's in a match and for losing by seven points or fewer. Because this meant that a team which won all of their matches but failed to get any bonus points would finish with 20 points but a team which won four matches, losing one by less than seven points and scoring four try's in every game would finish with 22 points, a rule was added that a team which won all of their matches would score 3 extra points guaranteeing that they would win the tournament.

** In the 1982 World Cup, West Germany and Austria went into their last match of the first round [[ForegoneConclusion knowing that a win by West Germany by one or two goals would put both teams into the next round,]] the other two teams in the pool having played their last match the previous day. West Germany scored after ten minutes, and the teams kicked the ball around aimlessly for the rest of the match, which drew a lot of booing and ire from the spectators. This match is known today as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gij%C3%B3n "The Disgrace of Gijón".]] FIFA changed the rules so that in future, the last matches in pool play would be played simultaneously - this would eventually filter down into the various continental championships.
*** However, the 2026 World Cup, to be played in North America, will feature a record 48 teams, with an original plan for 16 groups of three teams each... making it ''impossible'' for all the teams in a group to play simultaneously. FIFA has suggested that draws may be prevented during the group stage by the use of penalty shootouts...which would introduce the possibility of a team losing a penalty shootout ''on purpose'' to eliminate a rival. The possibility of this happening was removed in 2023, when FIFA announced that the 2026 World Cup would feature 12 groups of four, with the top two and eight best third-placed team advancing to the elimination rounds, citing satisfaction with the group stage in 2022, where only three of the 16 team progressing to the knock-out stage were known with a game left, fewer than usual.

** During the 2022 Xfinity 500 race at Martinsville, Creator/RossChastain managed to drive his car into (and partially on) the wall during the final lap to set a NASCAR record for the fastest lap ever at Martinsville at 130 mph en route to being credited with a fifth-place finish (later fourth after original fourth-place finisher Brad Keselowski's car was determined to be underweight and he was disqualified) while clinching a spot in the Championship 4. Despite NASCAR initially ruling the video game-esque move[[note]]Chastain would later say that he was inspired by the UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube version of ''NASCAR Thunder 2005''[[/note]] (nicknamed the "Hail Melon" as a play on both the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass Hall Mary pass]] in American football and a reference to Chastain's "Watermelon Kid" nickname due to his habit of SmashingWatermelons after victories) legal and the move gaining over 100 million views on social media; NASCAR received enough complaints about the possible risk to safety that the "Hail Melon" was outlawed beginning in 2023.

** The ICC introduced the system of bonus points in multi-nation tournaments, which offered 1 bonus point to a team [[CurbStompBattle winning by a great margin.]] Curiously enough, they also offered the bonus point to the ''losing'' side if they lost by a smaller margin. This was abused by some teams in EnemyMine situations. When a team realized they were far ahead and [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong couldn't lose.]] they would deliberately play poorly to reduce their winning margin and give away the bonus point to the losing side. This would let the losing side get ahead of a third team in the points table, making conditions more favourable to the winning side later on in the tournament. The ICC eventually patched this abuse by doing away with giving the bonus point to the losing side.

*** However, the 2026 World Cup, to be played in North America, will feature a record 48 teams, with an original plan for 16 groups of three teams each... making it ''impossible'' for all the teams in a group to play simultaneously. FIFA has suggested that draws may be prevented during the group stage by the use of penalty shootouts...which would introduce the possibility of a team losing a penalty shootout ''on purpose'' to eliminate a rival. The possibility of this happening was removed in 2023, when FIFA announced that the 2026 World Cup would feature 12 groups of four, with the top two and eight best third-placed team advancing to the elimination rounds.

** In 2023, the NFL passed the '''Brock Purdy Rule''', allowing teams to have a third quarterback available on game day in case their first two quarterbacks are either injured, suspended, or ejected from the game. This was in response to the [=49ers=] losing all of their quarterbacks to injuries during the 2022 NFC Championship Game.

** In 1908, player Germany Schaefer of the Detroit Tigers confused the opposing catcher by running backwards from second base to first, creating an opening for teammate Davy Jones to steal home plate. Major League Baseball banned backwards running [[http://books.google.com/books?id=mBRdDyCKxvcC&pg=PA12&dq=Germany+Schaefer+stealing+base+in+reverse&hl=en&sa=X&ei=K-XxUdOLHomMqwGWpIB4&ved=0CDAQuwUwAA#v=onepage&q=Germany%20Schaefer%20stealing%20base%20in%20reverse&f=false the next day.]] (Also reported in ''Website/{{Cracked}}'''s [[http://www.cracked.com/article_20717_5-dumb-ways-people-have-won-at-sports.html 5 Dumb Ways People Have Won at Sports]].)