Rules? We Don't Need No Stinking Rules

All the fuss about Bill Belichick being fined for stealing signals from the New York Jets gives me pause. I can remember a time and place when bending the rules was de rigeur. That would be my years on the front lawn league. There was a group of us bandie-types who used to hang out on in front of the high school during lunch, racing up and back across that sparsely sodded expanse, chasing each other, knocking each other silly, and occasionally breaking a rule or two.
The fact that all of us who played out there over the course of our three years at Boulder High were not jocks in the most profound way provided a tinge of irony for every game we played. This was, in part, what necessitated the cheating. None of us were out there to showcase our athletic skills. We were playing for the love of the game. That and the potential humiliation of the other team. Because we spent a good deal of time being ridiculed for our lack of manliness, it made our "two hand touch" rule one of the first things to fall by the wayside. If somebody got stiff-armed or clotheslined, it was pretty much expected that you would suck it up and get back in the huddle, waiting for your own chance to dole out incidental punishment.
The teachers and administration must not have been too concerned, since I cannot recall a single game that was disrupted by concern for our safety. If they had been watching more closely, they might have had their doubts. Take for example the frequent use of the two large trees on the lawn as extra blockers. You could always tell who was new to the lawn when you could get them backing up on pass coverage and run them smack into the trunk of one of the beastly elms that crowded either side. If you were real good, you could get away with it a couple of times.
One of my favorite ruses was to race downfield and come up behind the person who caught the ball and scream, "Lateral! Lateral!" And on more occasions than I can be proud to admit, the guy would toss the ball back to me and I would step into then end zone. Our playbook started with the Statue of Liberty and ended with the Fumblerooski, and if it all sounds just a little silly, remember that it was all deadly serious to us.
Cheating? I'd like to think of it more as advantageous competition. See you on the lawn.