A story from the Wall Street Journal this week reported a growing number of young entrepreneurs taking advantage of the popularity of beer pong, a drinking game prevalent on college campuses. As we all know, the game typically doesn’t require much in terms of equipment (a few ping-pong balls, red Solo cups, a little bit of clean water and a whole lot of beer). But even so, Northwestern University graduates Andy Wright and Mike Johnson recently started selling rubber mats designed to prevent cups from toppling over and spilling precious beer; and business is good! And it doesn’t stop there, the WSJ article described several other beer pong business ventures from current and former college students, including portable tables and apparel. While many colleges across the country have already banned similar products, the beer pong craze is still going strong. Billy Gaines and Duncan Carroll, grads from Carnegie Mellon University and the creators of bpong.com, even hosted the first World Series of Beer Pong last year.

Editor’s Note: We here at Blog About Beer still maintain that the game so popular across college campuses should be referred to as Beirut; beer pong, by definition, is played with ping-pong paddles and is technically an entirely different game. Thank You.