5 Old Sports Rules Thankfully Everyone Decided Were Stupid
The sports we know and love today weren’t figured out on day one. They were usually the work of some weird Puritan with extra leather burning a hole in their equipment room, which naturally led to some strange rules. Thankfully, for any sport that had the X-factor necessary to become national, people got together and decided which parts of it were stupid.
To that end, here are five very dumb real rules from the history of sport…
Basketball Players Have to Stay Still
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Basketball is a quick moving game, which is part of what makes it so exciting. But this wasn’t always true. One antiquated rule slowed the game to a literal standstill. Before the dribble, what was the legal way for a player to move along the court with the ball? Well, there wasn’t one. According to the rule, “A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it.” Meaning that a fast break looked more like a long-distance series of baton passes.
Batters Get to Choose Their Pitch
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Ah, the mental chess game between batter and pitcher, staring each other down from mound to plate. A game of suspense and reaction speed in equal measure. Now, at least. Not from the years 1867 to 1887 — back then, the batter was allowed to tell the pitcher where he wanted it. They’d ask for a high or low pitch, and the pitcher was required to serve it up as such. Though honestly, given that it probably would increase scoring, I’m surprised they haven’t thought about bringing it back.
Football Passes Had to Be From Five Yards Behind the Line of Scrimmage
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The forward pass in general was frowned upon at one point in football history. Some people saw the pride of football as residing in men slamming into each other in the pursuit of approximately one half yard at a time. There was never a rule banning the forward pass, though one absolute wet blanket did propose it. At one point, forward passes were forbidden unless the quarterback was five yards behind the line of scrimmage, which I cannot see, even in my most creative headspace, any possible reason for besides making football even harder to explain.
Soccer Matches Have No Official Length
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No, I’m not talking about the thing that still exists where they add time at the end of the game and neither team knows how much. Multiple soccer fans have tried to explain this to me, as something they seem to think is a selling point. Ah, the elimination of suspense altogether! Another masterstroke from the beautiful game! What I’m talking about is the very early days of soccer, when match length was apparently decided by the teams before they started, like this was some sandlot afterschool dust-up. Though I do sometimes wish two god-awful football teams could agree to keep it to two quarters.
If Wind Moves Your Golf Ball, It’s A Penalty
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Most of these rules are long gone, fossils of a forgotten, boring age. In classic golf fashion, though, they were still trying to get rid of stupid rules even into the past few decades. It took them until 2012 to change a rule that said that if wind or another outside force moved their ball, the golfer would be penalized for it.
In doing so, I have to assume they took away one of your chosen god’s absolute favorite recipes for a quick laugh.