BEER PONG: The evolution of one of Americas most popular college games.
The History of Beer Pong
By Salvatore Laudano & Jerry Piscitelli
Beerpong, Beirut, BP, Pong, or whatever you want to call this game has been a favorite on college campuses, backyard BBQs, tailgate parties, and any kegger thats been thrown since… well since when?
Where exactly did this game come from? Who really came up the game that has transformed that closet door into hours of fun?
Everyone seems to have their own version of where it all began; some claim that someone had an older brother who went to school with some guy who had been there for a decade, and came up with the game when he was at one of the hundreds of keg parties he was at. Or another guy claims to have come back to his small town and get all his buddies to believe that he came up with this new game. The problem is people believe all these fairy tales, so where did it all start?
The legend started sometime in the 1950s at Dartmouth, where some Ivy League frat boys were playing a game of ping pong. When one of the pledges had set his cup on the end of the table during a game and bingo! One of the brothers had sunk the cup and made this future banker drink the cup, and by doing so started one of the biggest college drinking games ever. By a simple mistake they struck a cord with everyone around – it would play for generations.
Seeing the brain-power that was at the school the boys got together and started making up rules to a game where two teams played ping pong with paddles, attempting to hit the ball into cups that were arranged into different formations. These future leaders of America played the first form of beer pong, that us drunks can recall. This form of the game holds the name Beer Pong and as time moved on the game like everything else began to evolve. Wit the availability of plastic cups the game started to change.
Having more cups on the table and the chance of smashing one with a drunken paddle swing or the accidental danger of swinging the paddles near each others face while drinking (try explaining why you got the stitches to your mom and dad) the game kept moving forward and evolving, and spreading in popularity, like one of the sorority girls after playing a couple of rounds, and then something happened.
People began throwing the balls instead of hitting them. The players saw that this was just as much of a challenge in throwing the ball as there was to hitting them, and it made the games move a lot quicker. For them this meant more games against each other and more times they had to fill the cups up, we told you they were the smart guys on campus.
Now where and when this began to happen is still, like us after playing it, a little blurry. A Princeton college news paper has this beginning at either Bucknell University or Lehigh University sometime in the late 70’s early 80’s. Lafayette University, Lehigh’s rival school, insists that the game started there. But with no proof, there is no glory. I could say I slept with the hottest girl on the planet but without the proof it is just a cool story, and a wet dream! Where ever the form of the game began it is the one that withstood the test of time, and is played by just about every college kid in America.
When the balls began to fly the name of the game took the turn as well. During the time the respective inventors of the modern game began playing; Lebanon was engulfed in civil war. With Beirut being the capital, it became the name of the game where people got to drop “bombs” on there friends and family. So when the argument comes up whether the name is beer pong or Beirut, the correct answer is Beirut, but as long as the beer is cold nobody is really going to care.
As for the rules of the game, they changed more times then your girlfriends mind while reading the dinner menu. Everyone plays by a different set of rules, so there is no way of stating the official rules unless you look at the tournament website you are going to be competing at, but even they vary. Rules have come from ‘double sink and the game is over’, to the ‘on-fire rule’ where if a player hits three shots in a row they get to shoot till they miss. Most pong players adjust to the house rules, no matter how off the wall they may be.
Pong players have come up with so many ways to change the game from its original conception. There is the double rack, with 2 racks of 6. There is the standard rack where there is a rack of 10 cups. The jumbo rack with 15 cups, the list goes on and on. BP players you a so many different surfaces to play the game as well, from the start on the ping pong table, to the closet door, to the ply-wood. People have gone as far as building them out of glass; intricate bar top tables, inflatable tables, tables that have designs that would blow peoples minds.
As the game continues to grow so do the industries around it, kind of a beer pong revolution. There are companies that make tables for people to travel with, tables that float, and racks that hold the cups in a perfect formation. Ping pong balls are no longer used for the game that they were designed to play, and companies have come up with the ways to print logos, and team names on the balls. The game that the college kids came up with by accident has become a million dollar industry.
This game has become a phenomenon, spawning cash tournaments like the World Series of Beer Pong that puts up a $50,000 prize for winning. Not a bad way to make a couple of bucks, except the beer belly you may develop from training. Bars use the game as a way to draw people to them, people play at concerts, sporting events, basically anywhere there is beer and a competitive nature.
I know a few guys that started playing for money instead of beer – thus ‘Casino Pong; is born, this variation is where teams give cups a dollar value and whoever sinks the cup gets the money, break this out instead of poker at you next party your wallet might be sorry, but at least no hang over.
Beer Pong has become a national past time for most of the young adults across America. So we would like to thank all the people that have helped develop the game, from the frat boys at Dartmouth in the 50’s, to the people that started got tired of swinging paddles and started throwing the ball in the 70’s. Thanks for all the hangovers and drunken hook ups, thanks for all the spin offs of the game and all fights that start over it. If you are a fan and player of the game, keep playing, and if you haven’t played… what are you waiting for?
