Three of The Strangest Rule Changes Ever Suggested for Major Sports

Three of The Strangest Rule Changes Ever Suggested for Major Sports

If there’s anything we’ve learned from years of following sports, it’s that our favorites can have some truly strange and bizarre rules. From intentional walks in baseball to full timeouts in the final minutes of the NBA, there are some rules that just don’t make sense. Of course, we can’t all agree that the specific sports would be better without them, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be abolished anytime soon, but given the current trend, some fans haven’t been opposed to suggesting some strange rules themselves, including…

1. Shoot Fouls Where You Make Them The folks over at Deadspin came up with some truly strange suggestions, and a few years ago, these included one small modification to basketball suggested by a reader called “Randy”: “What if, in basketball, the shooter had to take their foul shots where they were fouled? Would teams completely alter their game plan? Would teams start hacking away immediately after the inbound pass? Would games even be watchable assuming teams just spend half the game mauling each other the second the other team touches it?” On the one hand, it could be quite entertaining seeing someone making a foul shot from inside their own half. Or maybe, it would cause complete chaos on the court. Either way, the likelihood of this rule ever being passed is very slim.

2. Impractical Footwear With Wimbledon underway, journalist Sean Calvert collected some of the weirdest rule changes proposed for tennis, including Will Leitch’s improbable suggestion: “Most women’s tennis outfits skirt the edge of usefulness anyway, so let’s take it all the way: men must wear heels, and women must wear Crocs. This will not make the games more enjoyable, but it will make them funnier.” Considering that there are no major sports currently being played with heels, this could take tennis to the absurd, and make it quite challenging too. We’d see thousands of new fans just coming to watch the sport to witness men fumble around in heels, and watch women cringe at the thought of wearing Crocs in public.

3. Paper-Thin Jerseys There’s probably no better place to gauge the opinion of the masses than via Reddit, and the Redditor rishinator made a rather amusing suggestion that could change the way football is played: “This one is rather silly but if we can start making jerseys/kits for players with a fabric that breaks rather easily then it will be easy to spot a player who’s shirt is being pulled and parts of it will be in the culprit’s hand. Although I can see many reasons as to why this one will fail, it will be time-consuming to that every time a shirt is ripped it will need replacing.” At the very least, it would please female fans of the game to see the likes of Ronaldo or Wayne Rooney (joke) having to take their shirt off several times a game.

Do you know any other weird rule changes suggested for your favorite sports?