Posted on 10/16/2005 8:29:08 AM PDT by Rodney King
PHILADELPHIA - The bar is packed, the floor is wet, and dozens of glassy-eyed young people are squeezed around tables trying to lob Ping-Pong balls into cups of beer.
It is the final round of a beer pong championship, sponsored by a maker of portable beer pong tables, and all across the bar, as one team scores points, the other happily guzzles beer.
"It's awesome," said 22-year-old Chris Shannon, a senior at Drexel. "If you win, you win. If you lose, you drink. There's no negative."
Drinking games have been around since Dionysus. But a whole new industry has taken off around them, making the games more popular, more intense and more dangerous, according to college administrators who say the games are a thin cover for binge drinking.
In January, thousands of players are expected at the first World Series of Beer Pong, sponsored by a beer pong accessories company and held on the outskirts of Las Vegas.
This past summer, Anheuser-Busch unveiled a game it calls Bud Pong. The company, which makes Budweiser, is promoting tournaments and providing equipment to distributors.
"We created it as an icebreaker for young adults to meet each other," Francine Katz, a spokeswoman for Anheuser-Busch.
But she said Bud Pong was not intended for underage drinkers because promotions were held in bars, not on campuses.
And it does not promote binge drinking, she said, because official rules call for water to be used, not beer. The hope is that those on the sidelines enjoy a Bud.
On the ground, though, it may be a different story. At the Esso Club near Clemson University, Jessica Twilley, a bartender, said she had worked at several Bud Pong events and had "never seen anyone playing with water."
When told about the Esso Club, Katz responded that her information was that the club used water.
Budweiser is not the only brand using games. One recent Miller campaign featured spin the bottle, and its distributors have promoted beer pong tournaments as well.
Henry Wechsler, director of the College Alcohol Study at Harvard, said he was "aghast that companies who posture themselves as promoting responsible drinking promote drinking games, which by their nature involve heavy drinking."
As for the Bud Pong water defense, Wechsler said, "Why would alcohol companies promote games that involve drinking water? It's preposterous
FYI
Are they throwing them? In college when we played, it was 2 on 2, with ping pong paddles. In front of each person was a large SOLO cup of beer. If you hit another person's cup, they drank a sip. If you landed the ball in the cup, they drank the whole cup. If you knocked your own cup over with your paddle, you filled it up and drank the whole cup.
Now, in high school, we used to play a game we called Beirut. 4 people, each team had 8 or so Solo cups in front of them. There were at least 4 ping pong balls. You threw them at the other teams cups, and when you got one in someone from the other team had to drink the whole cup. Needless to say, people got ripped pretty fast. We used to have a large garbage can next to the table so that people could puke and rally.
WTF is up with that? That's too damn easy.
We used to play quarters, which takes a hell of a lot more skill than a ping pong ball.
Guaranteed to have everyone on the floor.
You threw quarters across the ping pong table?
Who else remembers watching Bob Newhart Show reruns with cup in hand?
Anyone up for "Hi, Bob"?
A "game with no downside" ping.
This is Beirut...but they're using the wrong name. I also played Beer Pong with Ping-Pong Paddles and two cups per side. I've played variations of Beirut with 6 or 10 cups.
Or Greta covering another tabloid / soap opera story. Lacy, Tracy, OJ, BJ... (rolling eyes)
Anyone up for "Hi, Bob"?
I was about to mention that myself!
Mark
She is one b!tch, there is no doubt whatsoever about that. But her advice is generally good. The idea behind being a caller is to ask her your question, then shut up and don't say anything unless she asks you a question--and then it had better be no more than one or two words, because she'll interrupt you halfway through it and make as if you were the one who interrupted her.
Pointing is done with ones elbow.
It's an old college drinking game.
Yeah, I know traditional quarters. I thought he meant something else.
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