Word: pong
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Beer pong is not just the drinking game of choice for this century's twentysomething thinkers; it's a cottage industry and quasi sport with mass-market 8-ft. aluminum beer-pong tables for sale, a national tournament offering a $50,000 grand prize and a forthcoming documentary called Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong. Top players have been known to rake in tens of thousands of dollars a year from competitions. Who says America's college grads lack marketable skills...
...boisterous game, in which players try to toss Ping-Pong balls across a table into cups of beer and drink if theirs are hit, is becoming so popular that it is in the midst of a backlash. Some cities and campuses troubled by the binge-drinking culture that accompanies beer pong are banning the pastime and its paraphernalia. "Beer pong is severely misunderstood," says Billy Gaines, co-founder of Bpong.com host of the World Series of Beer Pong (WSOBP). "It's a sport. It just happens to involve alcohol. People are not playing the game to get drunk but because...
...beer pong has certainly outgrown its frat-house roots. An early version with Ping-Pong paddles has been largely supplanted by a paddle-free game, which started in Northeastern colleges in the 1980s and was originally called Beirut--in reference to the battle-scarred Lebanese capital...
Whatever you call beer pong, it's ubiquitous. Bars across the country, like the LA Hangout in Lutz, Fla., host weekly tournaments and organize leagues. The Hangout's Sunday-night beer-pong crowd is usually 20 to 40 teams, mostly of players under age 30, including students, teachers and retail workers. "When we started it, no one had even heard of beer pong," says Paul Riebenack, one of the Hangout's two owners. "Now everyone seems to know what it is. Two and a half years later, it's more mainstream...
...competition. "I like to beat people," says Chris Clark, 22, who plays on Team Premier, a group of the six best players at the Hangout. "When I come here, I win pretty much 75% of the time, and it's 100 bucks in my pocket." For others, beer pong is a social tool. "You can go into a party where you don't know anyone and just jump into a game, and by the end of it, you know everyone," says student Kristin Catlin, 22. In college, beer pong's acculturative role makes it just like any other team sport...