Best examples of Rules Lawyering?

In My Humble Opinion
81

Me and a friend were playing Spades against another team and beating their butts. We were about to win another game, when the other team started bidding double-blind NoLo all the time. Sure, they would get set and wound up thousands of points in the hole, but they didn’t care. They kept forcing us to take overtricks. Since every 10 overtricks (called a bag) penalizes your team 100 pts, we couldn’t ever top the amount need to win. And if we bid high, it would then be easier for them to set us.

They weren’t trying to win. They were trying to keep us from winning.

There’s also kind of a mindset crisis when things get to that point. The other team is obviously trying to piss you off and make you quit out of frustration. Do you hang on, not stoop to their level, and win legitmately, no matter how long it takes? Or do you not waste your time and just quit and watch them celebrate and gloat over being douchebags? It’s a contest of wills between determined minds who love to crush their enemies and hear the lamentations of their women vs the utterly shameless.

82

As a recent fan of mixed martial arts, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I’ve seen every UFC tournament (and will watch 9 as soon as my tape arrives in the mail), and it’s been truly amazing to witness just how much gray area and wiggle room there was in a sport with “no rules”.

That’s exactly how the sport was marketed in the early days. Lawless. Brutal. Chaotic. Bloody. On the very razor’s edge of civility. No time limits. No weight classes. No way out. No mercy. And good chance of someone getting seriously injured or…gulp…KILLED.

Of course, as anyone who’s watched reality TV knows, once the competition actually begins, things often don’t go as planned. And sure enough, many UFC competitors caught on to a number of extremely unmacho tactics that There Were No Rules against…

Fence grabbing. Friggin’ everyone did this, and no wonder; it had all kinds of incredibly cheap uses. If he’s trying to take you down, grab the fence to stay up. If you’re having trouble maintaining a mount, pull up on the fence to keep him planted. Got him against the fence and having trouble following up? Grab the fence with both hands and pin him while you figure out your next move. He’s lifted you six feet off the ground and about to nail a lights-out throw? Grab the top of the fence and force him to put him back on your feet. Slip? Fence. An impenetrable barrier that was supposed to intimidate turned into a crutch. And occasionally a weapon (nb. David “Tank” Abbott’s opening match in The Ultimate Ultimate).

Hair pulling. Why would anyone in rough-and-tumble UFC resort to this? Well, uh, it allows you to move or trap your opponent’s head. And it hurts a lot. And once you get it clamped on, it’s very hard to escape from. That was certainly good enough for Orlando Weit (allowed him to escape a hold) and Royce Gracie (prevented him from receiving a crushing ground and pound).

Pulling on clothing. At its best, it was a sneaky tactic that was hugely effective against the unwary (nb. Royce Gracie against Remco Pardoel). At its worst, it resulted in something very similar to a cat fight (especially when hair pulling was added). Keith Hackney, in particular, got his shirt half yanked off seemingly every match.

Passivity. Sometimes, they’re just exhausted and can’t do any more. Sometimes, they’re just indecisive. And then you get a case like the UFC 5 Superfight (this is hearsay…I’ll see for myself soon enough) where both competitors wait for the opponent to attack…and wait…and wait…and wait. Referee John McCarthy, to his credit, did his best to keep things moving, but at times it was like flogging two dead horses.

Cowardice. Raised to an art form by Marco Ruas, who actually won a championship by backpedalling for about six minutes (although in fairness only after grappling didn’t work because his opponent wouldn’t let go of the fence). Equal credit, however, should go to Oleg Taktarov, whose entire strategy for his Superfight with Ken Shamrock was to run out the clock. Which worked to perfection.

Flopping. Who cares how silly it looks? It prevents you from getting punched, it allows you to go for the opponent’s legs, and it’s the easiest way to take the fight to the ground. Hey, if you’re going to go down, you may as well go down on your own terms.

The fifty-percent-plus-one offense. The inauguration of judges prompted a mass revamping of strategies…now that it was possible to win without coming within a par 5 of knocking out, submitting, or injuring the opponent, a lot of fighters elected to do just that. Witness the last match of UFC 11, where Scott Ferozzo threw, like, one kneebutt every 15 seconds or so, and that was sufficient to get him the nod over Tank Abbott. (No, not the championship match, the last match. You’ll see.)

Forget making the sport safer, the biggest benefit to going legit was making the sport much, much less sissified. :smiley:

83

It’s still sissified all to hell. Half the time those asshats look like they’re hugging each other.

84

I saw this one years ago on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

There’s apparently a semi-obscure rule in football that allows a “side-hike.” The center picks the ball up with his right hand, stands up while keeping his feet planted, twists his body to his left, and hands the ball to the QB.

Some asshole high school coach built a trick play around this called “Wrong Ball.” In the video, the teams are lined up in their stances around midfield, ready to start a play. Someone yells “WRONG BALL!” and the center executes a side-hike. The offensive line doesn’t move, and the defensive players – none of whom having ever seen a side-hike before – all relax. The quarterback trots over towards his coach, who is on the sideline near the opponent’s endzone, holding another ball. After the QB is safely past the secondary, he angles towards the endzone and takes off into a sprint. In the endzone, the line judge signals touchdown.

85

Shodan - Is it just me, or does Brazil come up a lot in these questionable-sportsmanship discussions? I’ve already mentioned Royce Gracie and Marco Ruas, and don’t ever forget the various World Cup teams (IIRC they’re the ones who started this flopping and fake injury crap).

Randy Seltzer - These days, you don’t have to leave anything to the imagination…just go to the YouTube link.
Oh, almost forgot…Leslie Nielsen, in his excellent Bad Golf My Way, is a veritable smorgasbord of creative rules interpretation. Too much to post here, but here are a few excerpts:

Re. the 14-club limit: "Since the putter is only of real use to a golfer on at most one day out of three or four, many players (myself included) feel it should be classified as an occasional golfing accessory, like a ball retriever, which leaves room in the bag for a ‘fifteenth’ club, maybe an extra wedge or 9-wood. The fact that many putters can in fact be used as ball retrievers merely underscores the correctness of this interpretation.

Re. Mulligans: “Every now and then you run into someone who refuses to honor the hallowed tradition of the Mulligan and insists that you play your first drive…Whenever this happens, I just explain that I always make it my policy to hit the Mulligan first. That way, if the shot works out, no one is likely to protest, and if it doesn’t work out, I simply go ahead and play my real shot, good-naturedly agreeing to forego my right to take a Mulligan.”

Re. ball in divot: “If it’s up to me, I just toss the ball out of here. I mean, it may be deep enough to qualify as a mini-bunker, but I don’t see a tiny rake anywhere nearby, and it can’t be a hazard since there’s no row of little red or yelllow toothpicks around it.”

Re. taking a drop: “The way I see it, meteors drop into the Earth’s atmosphere at upward of 20,000 MPH, and even an ordinary piano dropped from the upper story of an apartment building is going to be travelling at a pretty good clip when it hits the ground. It’s clear you have a lot of leeway.”

Re. gimmes: “There’s a lot of confusion and uncertainty in golf as to exactly what constitutes a gimme, but I think there’s general agreement that in any kind of friendly match, some putts - in fact, quite a few putts - should automatically be picked up without waiting for a formal notification from an opponent along the lines of ‘that’s good’ or ‘take it away’. The trouble arises when a putt is not conceded, and you have to take the initiative and pick it up. This unauthorized or self-awarded gimme probably accounts for 75 percent of all picked-up putts, so it really pays to learn how to make this daring, stroke-saving move as confidently and expertly as possible.”