Cornhole Is Looking To Become The Next Olympic Sport. Time To Start Training Your Bags Off
Sportico - The American Cornhole League has taken its first outside investments, as basketball coach John Thompson III and real estate investor James Simmons III have invested in the fast-growing league.
“I’m really excited about the doors this is going to open for us,” ACL commissioner and founder Stacey Moore said on a phone call. “We’re looking forward to adding on partners that they can bring to the table and then business expansion in general. We like to say that we’re the only sport that can be played at another professional or college sporting event. The portability of our game is unique. And, obviously, we want to make cornhole an Olympic sport.”
...The investment will be used to expand the ACL’s efforts at marketing, content development and international expansion. In particular the ACL is looking to popularize the game outside the U.S., and sees Canada, Europe and Australia and New Zealand as prime markets for expansion.
You reach a certain point in life and it becomes abundantly clear that perhaps your dream of one day competing in the Olympics will remain just that--a dream. You were never fast enough to be a sprinter. You were never tall enough to be a basketball player. You can't swim for shit. You didn't even know that track cycling was a thing until the last Olympics you watched. For like 99.5% of us, we come to the realization by the time we're like 12 years old that you'll never be an Olympian.
Then a beautiful sport like Cornhole comes along. A magical game in which anybody can play and anybody can win. And all of a sudden, the game starts to pick up enough steam and enough popularity that maybe, juuuuuuuuuust maybe, we'll see it in the Olympics one day. All of a sudden, here's your chance.
Now plenty of folks out there think that cornhole is just a game you play while drinking at a tailgate or on the beach. You step up and without any rhyme or reason, you just try to toss a bean bag through a hole in a wooden board. A fun, but elementary way of looking at a sport of skill and strategy.
Do me a favor and watch the video above. That right there is the difference between you and your buddies playing cornhole before a football game, and the greatest in the world. It's a thinking man's game. You want to go for airmail after airmail? These guys will eat your lunch.
If you want to be an Olympic cornhole player, you gotta know this game inside and out. You have to be thinking at least 2-3 moves in advance. You need to strategize the board. You need to know your opponent's next move before that move even enters their head. And then when you finally work that board to the way you need it, you have to have the clutch gene to drop your bags directly in your opponent's face.
My god. The atmosphere is electric. Standing room only, crowd goes insane. Now tell me you don't want that in the Olympics.
So the time to start training is now. You may have been a failed athlete your entire life but it's time to flip the narrative. Study the greats. Bags in the morning before work. Bags in the afternoon during your lunch break. Bags at night until the lights go out. Bags for life. I'll see everybody hopefully 11 years from now in Brisbane.