Among 1970s and ’80s Drinking Games, Blow Pong Was King

Beer pong. Flip cup. Stack cup.

For years, these noble drinking games have been some of Princeton’s most popular extracurricular activities. They are the beloved staples of our raucous Saturday nights. And they are the glorious battlefields upon which students will either become best friends forever … or lifelong, bitter enemies.

But, between 1972 and the mid-1980s, a different drinking game existed almost exclusively on the Princeton campus. It was a game that was elegant in its design, collaborative by its very nature, and (most importantly of all) able to force its competitors to drink a truly staggering amount of alcohol.

I am, of course, referring to the drinking game of “blow pong.”

And back in the 1970s and 1980s, let me tell you … blow pong was king.

The rules of the game are as follows: You start with a netless pingpong table and surround it with two 11-person teams, with each team defending a long and short side of the table. Then, once the players are in position, a referee drops a pingpong ball into the center of the table and everyone begins blowing, simultaneously, like a squad of human hairdryers.

This 22-person blowing battle continues until one team blows the ball over the edge of the opposing team’s end. At which point, the winning team is awarded a point, and every member of the losing team must drink a 12-ounce cup of beer. The game then resumes, and continues in this fashion, often over the course of several hours, until one team has won 21 points, at which point it is declared the game’s winner and is awarded the appropriate bragging rights.

Now, obviously, for those keeping score at home, this means that every member of the losing team will ultimately end up drinking 21 beers (each 12 ounces large) for each of their team’s 11 members. This adds up to exactly 2,772 ounces of beer consumed. Or, approximately 21.5 gallons.

That’s enough beer to fill up a standard home aquarium.

But we’re not here to do basic arithmetic, or to question the social mores of the past. We’re here to learn about blow pong, baby! So, to answer some of my most pressing pong-related questions, I reached out to Frank “Harpo” Lowe ’75, one of this country’s foremost blow pong experts and a man who was, incidentally, the recipient of Prospect Avenue’s coveted MVB Award (Most Valuable Blower) in both 1973 and 1974.

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1975 Bric-a-Brac

According to Lowe, back in the 1970s the game was played year-round in casual pickup matches “where, on a Saturday night, people would informally get together [and it would be] every man for himself.” But, per Lowe, the most important game of the year was the annual blow pong championship that took place between Cottage and Cap and Gown.

Every fall, starting from its inaugural year in 1972, there was an interclub tournament between Cottage and Cap, named the “Boot Classic.” This name was given due to the fact that the winning eating club received a painted boot as an award. And, also, because after drinking 2,772 ounces of beer, teams were very likely to “boot” during the competition.

Frequently attracting crowds of hundreds of students, this tournament featured elaborate speeches, rituals, and team cheers (as well as a fictional “archdeacon” who provided the tournament’s opening invocation). Often lasting the entire afternoon, it was a legendary battle of wits, lung strength, and sheer intestinal fortitude.

However, blow pong’s popularity has drastically declined over the past few decades. Several alumni, including Lowe, remember one-off blow pong games being played well into the 2000s; but the last documented instance I could find of blow pong being played at Princeton was in 1986. And beyond that, I personally could find no evidence, either in interviews or in online research, that the sport had a widespread presence at Princeton beyond the late 1980s.

Instead, thanks to the inevitably of inertia, the sport slowly disappeared from the campus, only to be replaced by a series of newer and slightly less boozy drinking game alternatives like beer pong (which came to national prominence in the ’70s and ’80s) and flip cup (which allegedly was first played in Hoboken in the late 1980s).

But, while blow pong has largely left the public consciousness, it will never leave the hearts and spirits of Princeton’s intrepid undergraduates. Every time a Keystone Light is chugged at a Cloister rager, it still evokes the fierce athleticism of Frank Lowe. Blow pong still lives on at Princeton, just perhaps a little less ostentatiously than it once did.

But also, during this year’s Reunions if you are planning on drinking … please do it responsibly.

That feels like something I should probably say in an article like this, right?