Beer Pong: Bad idea with a capital B
Beer Pong has little to do with the beers, or really the beer culture, that we usually discuss here, but in this case it seems necessary to ask: What were they thinking?
Beer Pong was already around before Anheuser-Busch rolled out Bud Pong this summer. In fact, a town on the New Jersey shore banned playing Beer Pong in public. That should have been a hint.
Now the mainstream press has noticed, so you’re seeing headlines like this one in the Houston Chronicle: “Beer makers cash in on drinking games.” That particular story includes this quote:
“It’s awesome,” said Chris Shannon, 22, a senior at Drexel University. “If you win, you win. If you lose, you drink. There’s no negative.”
A-B is promoting tournaments and providing equipment to distributors. “We created it as an icebreaker for young adults to meet each other,” said Francine Katz, a spokeswoman for Anheuser-Busch. She said Bud Pong does not promote binge drinking because official rules call for water to be used, not beer. The idea is that those on the sidelines enjoy a Bud.
Right.
The story quotes a bartender in South Carolina saying she had worked at several Bud Pong events and had “never seen anyone playing with water.”
