So ... what’s the dumbest rule in all of sports?

There’s plenty of candidates.

The designated hitter?

Back in 1973, baseball decided that one guy can play the field without ever getting to bat while another guy can bat regularly in the lineup without ever playing the field.

Pretty dumb.

Not the dumbest.

The no fair for a catcher to block the plate in baseball anymore?

No matter how that new rule is written, it’s viewed the same way by umpires. If the catcher blocks the plate in any way, shape or form, the runner is safe.

Even if the throw beats him there by 20 feet.

Pretty dumb.

Not the dumbest.

How about the fact that a pro football coach has to carry a red flag during each game and throw it on the field if he thinks the officials got a call wrong against his team?

Uhh, maybe the official upstairs in the booth — who is looking at the replay of every play anyway — can just tell the referee when a play needs to be looked at.

You know ... Let the officials officiate, let the coaches coach?

Pretty dumb.

Not the dumbest.

OK, so you get the point. It would take an incredibly dumb rule to beat out those listed above.

Dirt track racing has one.

The good ole’ provisional.

The provisional may belong to a particular series, such as the World of Outlaws, or to the race track itself.

What it does is enable that series and/or race track to enter a driver or two into the main feature of the show on a given night — whether that driver earned his way in or not.

Because Dave Hess Jr. won a regular Fab Four Late Model feature at Lernerville — on a night dubbed the track’s Midseason Championship — he was handed an automatic berth in the prestigious Firecracker 100 the following week.

Just because.

Thankfully, Hess earned his way into that race like everybody else — through placing so high in a heat race or B-Main.

That didn’t mean the provisional went away. Somebody else got to use it.

Provisionals should not exist at all.

It doesn’t matter that a guy won a designated race or leads a certain track or racing series in points.

In dirt track racing, they have heats and B-Mains — which serve as last-chance qualifiers — in which drivers have to do well in to earn a spot in that night’s main event, the “championship” race of the night.

You want in? Earn your way in.

If you didn’t, you or your car just wasn’t good enough that night. Try again next time.

If the New York Yankees don’t qualify for the playoffs, they’re not handed a spot because they’re the Yankess.

The defending Super Bowl champion doesn’t get a “provisional” spot in the playoffs the following year.

Racing’s provisional?

Dumbest rule in sports.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle