America Loves Countdowns

Countdown #27: Non-Cheating Cheaters

There are two different types of cheating. The first type is pretty black and white. It is when someone intentionally breaks the rules in an effort to gain an advantage while trying not to get caught. This is the type of cheating most of us recognize and frown upon. However, there is another type of cheating that is considered either clever or despicable depending on your perspective. The “non-cheating” cheater doesn’t break any rules. Rather, this type of cheater exploits loopholes in the system to gain their advantage, but they don’t necessarily have to worry about being caught because, technically, they are not doing anything “wrong”. After all, they are operating within the rules. This week's America Loves Countdowns® series lists ten of those types of cheaters and allows you the reader to make your own moral determination. This list is dedicated to my best friend Tony, who has been the undisputed king of non-cheating cheaters since we were kids playing Tecmo Bowl to adults playing fantasy football.

Deacon Jones
During his Hall of Fame career with the Los Angeles Rams, Deacon Jones was probably the toughest, most dominate defensive linemen in the NFL. Jones prided himself on a move he called the "head slap", where he would slap the blocker's helmet right after the snap in an effort to get the extra step he needed to beat the blocker and get to the quarterback. The idea was that the blocker would be stunned by being punched in the head, and of course that is exactly what happened on many plays during Jones' career. Trying it in today's NFL would draw a 15-yard penalty, but in the 1960's it was perfectly legal.

Sean Avery
During the first round of the 2008 NHL Playoffs, notorious Rangers troublemaker Sean Avery decided to take advantage of a 5-on-3 power play that his team had against the New Jersey Devils. He turned his back on the play, faced Devils goalie Martin Brodeur, and began waving his stick in front of Brodeur's face so that he couldn't see what was going on. Technically there was nothing in the rule book to stop Avery from doing it - until the next day, that is. The NHL quickly enacted a rule to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again.

Nick Freeman
Typically a lawyer's strategy is to argue that his client did not commit the offense. Freeman has taken a different approach. The British lawyer is renowned for his ability to get clients (many of whom are celebrities) off on technicalities such as failure to calibrate speed guns or improper police paperwork. He once nearly got a case thrown out because he noticed that a magistrate winked at a court reporter. Another time he got a drunk driver acquitted because his blood alcohol level was measured by the surgeon who treated him at the hospital rather than by a police officer. Freeman has gotten so adept at catching little details that the UK press has nicknamed him "Mr. Loophole", a label of which he is proud.

Mark Henderson
In December of 1982, the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots played in a blizzard at Foxborough. The field was a complete mess and neither team could score. With about five minutes left in the 4th quarter, the Patriots drove deep enough into Dolphins territory to attempt a field goal, but it would be a nearly impossible 33-yard attempt for kicker John Smith since there was so much snow on the ground. So Patriots head coach Ron Meyer told Mark Henderson, the stadium's snowplow operator, to go clear a spot on the field for Smith to attempt the field goal. Henderson did just that, Smith made the kick, and the Pats won the game 3-0. Dolphins coach Don Shula was outraged and the incident forever became known as "The Snowplow Game", but there was nothing in the NFL rulebook that disallowed Henderson from clearing that spot on the field.

Frank Corridon
In the early 1900's, the game of baseball was still evolving. Pitcher Frank Corridon happened to be playing at the right time. One day he picked up a ball that had landed in a puddle and discovered that the ball being wet on one side caused it to take unexpected twists in mid-flight. Thus was born the spitball. Like some of the other items on this list, the spitball was eventually outlawed as Major League Baseball figured out that it gave pictchers an unfair advantage over hitters, but not until Corridon was able to parlay his spitball into a career in baseball.

Minnesota Smokers
Like many other states before them, Minnesota passed a law in 2007 which prevented smoking in restaurants, bars, and other indoor businesses. However, there was an exception in the law for theatrical productions. The idea was that an actor may need to light a cigarette in order to perform a scene. It wasn't long before smokers in Minnesota realized that they could take advantage of this exception. Bars began printing "playbills" and their patrons became "actors". Their role was to play themselves before there was a smoking ban! Some people even dressed up in costumes and donned fake accents. It never ceases to amaze me the ingenuity that goes into something so harmful to one's body.

The Oakland Raiders
The "Holy Roller" play was, in the words of Oakland Raiders announcer Bill King, "the most zany, unbelievable, absolutely impossible dream of a play" in the history of pro football. Trailing the San Diego Chargers 20-14 with just 10 seconds remaining in a 1978 game, Raiders QB Ken Stabler rolled out and was about to be taken down for a game-ending sack. Seeing no other option, Stabler intentionally fumbled the ball forward to keep the play alive. Oakland RB Pete Banaszak then "fumbled" it even further, and finally TE Dave Casper batted the ball into the endzone where he fell on it for the game-winning score. The Chargers and their fans were irate, but technically there was nothing in the rules to stop the Raiders from doing what they did. A fumble was a fumble, regardless of how intentional it looked. The NFL would create a rule the following season which stated that a fumble on 4th down or in the final two minutes of a game could not be advanced forward by the offense.

MIT Blackjack Team
In the 1980's, a group of really smart MIT students figured out that they could legally win casino blackjack games by counting the cards. The method did not always guarantee success, but it greatly improved the odds of winning. The best part for the MIT students was that what they were doing was not against the rules. In fact, the casinos had to find ways to prevent cards from being counted. This form of non-cheating cheating inspired the 2008 movie 21.

Michael Larson
The 1980's game show Press Your Luck featured an electronic 18-square gameboard which lit up one square at a time and shuffled at a rapid pace. Contestants on the show had to hit a stop button to in order to land on one of the squares, which either resulted in d cash/prizes or the dreaded "whammy". It was seemingly a game of total luck, but in reality, the gameboard had only five pre-programmed patterns. An unemployed ice cream truck driver named Michael Larson figured this out, and after taping several episodes and playing them in slow-motion, he was able to memorize the patterns and clean house on the show. He won over $110,000, which was way more than anyone had ever even come close to on Press Your Luck. The show's producers soon figured out that something was amiss, but it was too late and Larson got to keep all of the money.

College Basketball Coaches
The NCAA has a bunch or rules around what a head coach can and cannot do in order to recruit a player, but a savvy coach can work his way around these rules. For example, there is a rule that says you cannot give gifts or payments to a recruit's high school coach, but there is no rule that says that you cannot "hire" the high school coach to come work at a college's summer camp. There is a rule that limits the timeframe and amount of phone calls that a coach can make to a recruit, but until recently (when too many coaches exploited the loophole), there was no rule against text messaging with a recruit. Starting to get the picture? College basketball recruiting is a very competitive and often dirty business, and for head coaches, their livelihood is dependent upon their ability - right or wrong - to manipulate the system.

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