15 Crazy Sports Rules That Make You Scratch Your Head

When you first start out playing a sport, the first things you learn are the rules. You can’t just run with the basketball, you have to dribble. You can’t use your hands in soccer. You can’t tackle the quarterback too hard in the NFL (sigh). Rules aren’t always the most fun things to talk about, but they are necessary. Otherwise, every game would look like a pickup game.

All of the aforementioned rules are ones that both players and fans know about. But there are many rules that people are completely unaware of. Every so often, a unique sports rule will pop up and have people scratching their heads. We want to bring those rules to the light of day.

Here are 15 of the craziest sports rules that you never knew existed.

They say you see something new in baseball every day, and this is something that would leave many players, coaches and fans dumbfounded. Per MLB rule 2.00, a ball hit up the middle that strikes the pitching rubber and then bounces into foul territory is a foul ball. Seriously.

As long as the pitcher or no other fielder touches the ball, it’s considered a foul if it rebounds into foul play.

What makes this rule even odder is that if a batted ball hits a base (which is also in fair territory) but then ricochets into foul territory, that ball is then considered fair.

When can a player still play after fouling out of an NBA game? If the team doesn’t have five able-bodied players due to injury or ejection, then any player who fouls out can stay in a game with each subsequent personal foul also being a technical foul.

In other words, if a single player stayed in a game and committed eight personal fouls, then his team would have also been assessed three technical fouls — one for the sixth, seventh and eighth personal fouls.

In college basketball, you can’t play with more than five fouls, and teams would be reduced to four players on the court in this instance.

This rule is present in the NFL and high school football, but not college football for some reason. As the name of it states, once a player makes a fair catch, then his team gets the option to attempt a field goal from the exact spot where the catch was made. It is Article 10.2.4 (a) in the NFL rulebook.

There are a couple of changes in this field goal attempt compared to a regular one as the defense must be at least 10 yards from the spot of the kick, and there is no snap — only a hold by the holder.

You rarely ever see this play enacted because most teams either try to move the ball downfield after a fair catch, or elect for a Hail Mary attempt from 65-plus yards rather than a field goal attempt.

The last conversion of the free-catch kick came in 1976 on a 45-yard attempt by Ray Wersching of the Chargers.

Tennis has a hindrance rule that means if there is some sort of unintentional distraction by one player in the middle of a point, then the other player can request to have the point replayed. An unintentional distraction could be a player’s hat falling off or a ball falling out of a pocket mid-play.

A deliberate distraction such as a player purposely taking off their hat during the middle of a point would result in a point by his or her opponent.

Andy Murray fell victim of the unintentional hat hindrance when he lost his lid during the 2012 U.S. Open in a match versus Tomas Berdych. Even though Berdych clearly wasn’t going to get to a ball, he says he was hindered by Murray’s hat falling off in the middle of play and the point was restarted.