Illinois pair win Beer Pong World Series – and $50,000
Beer pong, or Beirut as it is called on many college campuses, is played with two teams standing at opposite ends of a table. At each end of the table, ten 16-ounce cups, filled with roughly 4 ounces of beer or another liquid, are placed in a bowling-pin formation.
Each team takes turns tossing beer pong balls (similar to table tennis balls) at their opponent’s cup formation. If a ball goes into a cup, the cup is removed from the game, and its contents are usually imbibed by the opponent. The first team to knock out all of their opponent’s cups wins.
Matt White and Ross Hampton learned to play beer pong the same place most people do — in college. It wasn’t until recently that the two started playing competitively and realized they were actually pretty good.
Their move from casual beer pong players to tournament competitors mimics that of National Beer Pong League co-founder Duncan Carroll’s decision to establish a competitive beer pong league. But he insists he and his business partners weren’t the first ones to think of organizing it. “We’re just the only people to actually carry it out,” he said, laughing.
The world series, in its seventh and largest year, has drawn more than 1,000 players (450 teams) from 48 U.S. states and 14 countries.
Organization of a sport which for many college students is nothing more than a mindless drinking game may sound a little far-fetched, but Carroll said it actually came quite easily to him and his college buddies, all members of the Carnegie Mellon swim team in the late 1990s.
“We played a ton of beer pong,” he said…
Carroll said the tournament attracts a “mixed bag” of people who all “happen to be good at beer pong.”
The National Beer Pong League’s latest development is an app for the Android smart phone that he says will bring competitive beer pong to even larger crowds. The most casual backyard beer pong player can log on and track their wins on the league’s website.
At the end of the day, Carroll said, “It’s really just a sport that happens to involve alcohol.”
In that respect, not especially different from air hockey or any other table games that have always been played in pubs. Cripes, I was good at a couple of them. At least, after sufficient beer I thought I was.
