Last week’s Monday night football game ended on a strange note, and it got me to thinking…
Does anyone think they have discovered a situation that is not covered by the rules of a sport, or where there are inconsistent rules?
Probably what would interest people the most would be such things in major (US) sports: Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, but perhaps the rules are more extensively codified there than say, bowling, so perhaps the chance is greater for an undefined situation in a sport other than those I listed.
In a spring training game a couple of years ago, Randy Johnson threw a pitch that hit a passing pigeon and killed it. The umpire called time and ruled that it was no pitch. There is nothing in the rules of baseball that covers such an eventuality except a rule that gives umpires the authority to make decisions on rules not spelled out.
And in 1998, Larry Dierker of the Astros had a seizure in the dugout and the game was suspended and completed at a later date. According to the rules of baseball, this wasn’t a situation where a game could be suspended. But they did anyway.
Golf leaves pretty much nothing to chance. If you find the interpretations of the Official Rules of Golf, you will find riffs on whether or not a pear is still a pear if is has already been eaten.
Normally when a weird thing happens that is not covered by a rule they will change the rule by the start of the next season.
One example is it used to be legal to fumble forward on purpose on 4th down to pick up a first down. Now the rule is that you can recover the ball but you can’t gain yardage - the ball is spotted where it was fumbled , not where it was recovered. This is sometimes called the Stabler rule because Kenny Stabler did this to pick up a crucial 1st down late in a game. I suppose the rule makers never thought anyone would fumble on purpose.