Thanks man, I've never heard it explained that way before. But I have to say I don't like the smell of it... I'll try to explain without being a dick.

The fundamental question seems to be whether BJJ is an individual or a team sport. To me it's an individual contest. I don't mean to downplay the importance of my club and training partners, but at it's core grappling is a one on one competition.

I think that the essence of good competition is for both sides to be as even as possible. That's why we have grades and weight classes. Trying to engineer the draw, so that you or your team mate effectively get a bye seems pretty unsportsmanlike to me. It's quite disrespectful to the other grapplers competing who may not be afforded the same opportunity (or think that taking such an opportunity is the right thing to do).

To my mind a sense of sportsmanship and fair play should mean that you fight whoever you're matched with. If it's your team mate so be it.

Like anyone else, I prefer not to fight my friends, but if that's how the draw falls, I hope that we both love this sport enough to understand that these things happen, that we go hard at each other for 5-6 minutes and that we remain friends afterwards. If we don't, we probably weren't friends anyway.