The Rapid Rise of College Cornhole
Credit: Photo courtesy of Adrian College- Several colleges nationwide have established cornhole club teams.
- At Adrian College, the sport has achieved varsity status, and Winthrop University now offers cornhole scholarships.
- Players are landing corporate sponsorships and earning NIL money for product promotion.
- Coaches and players don’t want the sport to become sanctioned by the NCAA.
Morgan Blonde flips her beanbag around several times, pensively bouncing it in her hand as she prepares to launch it 27 feet toward a 4-by-2-foot slanted board. It lands with a thunk, sliding just inches away from a hole carved into it.
Her second beanbag collides with the first, knocking both into the hole.
She’s scored 6 points, giving her and her Adrian College teammate Jeremy VanEpps the lead in their match against … Adrian College. That’s right — Adrian has two teams in the quarterfinals of the collegiate cornhole championship tournament.
During the match, televised on ESPN, the action cuts to an interview with Adrian head coach Max Benedict, the nation’s first cornhole head coach leading the nation’s first varsity-level cornhole program.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Benedict says. “We’ve got two teams going head-to-head on the main stage.”
What began as backyard entertainment has become a “real” sport broadcast nationally, and colleges across the country are jumping on the cornhole bandwagon.
The Explosive Growth of Cornhole
Despite its recent ascendance, cornhole is actually centuries old.
According to legend, the game began when 14th century cabinet maker Matthias Kuepermann observed children tossing rocks into a groundhog hole. He fashioned a board and substituted a bag of corn for rocks, giving birth to the sport we know today.
If for some reason you’re not familiar with cornhole, think of it as horseshoes without the sand. The objective is to land your bag on the board and, preferably, in the hole, amassing 21 points faster than your opponent.
Like pickleball, cornhole has risen out of relative obscurity to become one of America’s fastest-growing and most popular sports. Founded in 2016, the American Cornhole League (ACL), a main governing body for the sport, claims its membership includes more than 150,000 players worldwide. Corporate sponsors include Bush’s Beans, Bacardi Spiced, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and Discount Tire.
Operating under the ACL umbrella is ACL College, which promotes cornhole at the collegiate level and runs the annual championship tournament. The next tournament is scheduled for Jan. 2-3 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. You can catch it on ESPN.
Trey Ryder, the ACL’s chief strategy officer, told BestColleges the organization’s mission is to grow the game at the collegiate level, encouraging more schools to form teams.
“We saw there was a growing need back in 2018, and we said to ourselves, ‘Why don’t we just put on a national college championship and invite anybody who’s college age to come and compete?'” he said. “At the time, we didn’t really know what the scope of the college game was, but we knew cornhole was played at the college level, so we said, ‘Hey, why not?'”
Ryder credits ESPN’s coverage for helping to jump-start their efforts.
“Being able to broadcast live on television was revolutionary for the sport,” he said, “and that helped us gain the next wave of popularity.”
In recent years, institutions such as Oklahoma State University, East Carolina University, Texas A&M University, and the University of South Carolina have formed club teams. Some players receive corporate sponsorships and earn name, image, and likeness (NIL) funding for promoting brands on social media.
These student-athletes aren’t necessarily physical specimens, though many have played high school sports, and some even compete in other sports at the college level and play cornhole in the offseason.
“The slogan for the ACL is ‘Anyone can play, and anyone can win,'” Ryder explained. “We embody that because no matter your size, shape, age, or background, you can play the sport of cornhole.”
One attribute they share is a competitive spirit, Ryder said, and colleges are using cornhole as a recruiting tool to attract students eager to participate in the sport.
“People are now starting to go to college to play cornhole,” he said.
Winthrop University Offers Cornhole Scholarships
Some are even earning cornhole scholarships. Located only a few minutes from the ACL’s headquarters in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Winthrop University this year became the nation’s first school to offer scholarships to students playing cornhole.
Winthrop also has its own head coach, Dusty Thompson, a former professional player who now spends his time canvasing the country for the best cornhole talent and molding them into championship contenders.
Four current players had an opportunity to turn professional but opted for the Winthrop experience instead, Thompson told BestColleges. All 11 team members receive partial scholarships, along with corporate sponsorships and the opportunity to play on the nation’s top-ranked squad.
“That was a big selling point for them to come here,” Thompson said. “Some of them have gotten a few sponsors and get paid monthly. They did get more recognition from being a part of the number-one rated team and got deals they probably would not have gotten.”
Colson Clary, a first-year exercise science major from King George, Virginia, jumped at the chance to compete at the highest collegiate level and earn a degree along the way.
“Not only did I get an exclusive deal with in-state tuition being from out of state, but we can also get money from any company because we’re technically a club sport and not NCAA-regulated,” Clary explained.
He noted that one of his teammates has sponsorships from about 20 companies back in his hometown, earning money through social media promotions.
“There’s really no limit,” he said.
Another teammate, Jacob Harrison, a first-year business administration major from Bethlehem, Georgia, started playing the game at age 5 and was earning money from tournaments long before landing at Winthrop.
“I had the opportunity to go pro this year, so I could either take my pro card or go to college and pursue my degree and play cornhole there,” Harrison said. “I chose the college route, and I feel like it’s a better opportunity for me.”
With an eye toward continued growth, Thompson doesn’t have to look far for an example of how a small university, with an enrollment under 4,000, can quickly build a successful program. Winthrop’s esports team, established in 2019, has won four national championships and now features more than 90 members, many of whom are on full scholarship.
“We’re trying to build the same thing, but we’re just not as big yet,” Thompson said.
His plan is to add another eight or 10 players next year and, in the meantime, win titles at next January’s tournament and solidify the program’s preeminent status.
“We’ve been called the ‘Alabama of cornhole,'” Thompson said, “so we embrace it.”
Adrian College Cornhole Achieves Varsity Status
Winthrop may be the best college cornhole program, but it’s not the first. That distinction belongs to Adrian College, a Michigan institution with fewer than 2,000 students.
Technically speaking, Adrian is the first college to establish a varsity-level program.
Max Benedict became head coach in January 2022 after responding to an ad in the local paper.
“I was given a desk, and the instructions were, ‘OK, make cornhole,'” he told BestColleges.
He’s since made Adrian one of the premier programs, along with Winthrop, whom Adrian recently played in a home-and-home series. Unlike Winthrop, an NCAA Division I school, Adrian competes in Division III and, therefore, cannot offer athletic scholarships.
“We get kids who have been playing cornhole since they were 2 years old,” he said, “and they’re coming here to play cornhole. They’re not here to do anything else but play cornhole and get a degree after four years.”
Achieving varsity status means the college pays for uniforms, equipment, travel, and related expenses for the 12 players. At most other schools, students cover such costs themselves. Whatever money Adrian players win at tournaments is funneled right back into the program to help defray these costs.
Managing that budget and coordinating logistics constitute a big part of Benedict’s job.
“I do all the travel stuff,” he said. “I get them where they’re supposed to go. I make sure the hotels are booked. I feed them. The only thing they should have to worry about is tossing a bag.”
But there’s another aspect of the job — the coaching part.
To the casual observer, cornhole seems like a simple sport: Throw a bag at a hole in a board. It doesn’t involve complex strategy like football or basketball demands. So what value does a cornhole coach add?
It turns out the sport does involve a decent amount of tactical acumen.
“You have to start laying blocker bags,” Benedict explained, “figuring out how to cut around bags and getting more comfortable with taking big shots.”
Yet the more important aspect of the job involves mental preparation.
“Cornhole is a very mental game,” said Blonde, a senior musical theater major from Hillsdale, Michigan. “If you’re in your head, you’re not going to play very well, even if you have all the skill in the world. There are some times when we don’t even practice. We meditate and just kind of get in the right mind space to play the game.”
Winthrop’s Harrison concurs.
“You have to be mentally strong throughout the game,” he said. “If you lose one game, you can’t get down on yourself because you have to come back and win the next one.”
Blonde, who has twice been featured on ESPN and is backed by corporate sponsors, played volleyball and basketball and ran track in high school but didn’t pursue sports at the collegiate level until cornhole became an option.
“I wasn’t planning on playing any sports at Adrian until cornhole came along,” she said. “Over the summer, going into my sophomore year, they announced they were forming a cornhole team, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’d be kind of fun.'”
It took some time for the program to gain respect among students on the Adrian campus, Blonde said.
“At first, people thought it was dumb and were like, ‘Why is this a thing?'” she said. “But this year, we’ve actually gotten a lot of support from other people, and they’re asking me questions about it and being like, ‘Hey, that sounds really fun to just go and throw bags with all your friends.'”
Of course, to the players, coaches, and sponsors involved, cornhole is completely legitimate, and “there’s no hate on it” among fellow students at Winthrop, Clary noted, even if they’re “kind of jealous when they hear we’re getting money for it.”
“They realize just how serious it is,” Harrison added, “and that it can be more than just a backyard game.”
A Future Without the NCAA
Coaches and players at these two schools, along with folks at the ACL, don’t believe cornhole will, or should, become fully recognized by the NCAA.
“For now, I don’t foresee cornhole being an NCAA-sanctioned sport,” the ACL’s Ryder said. “We’re working with schools to establish a club model. That allows us to have a lot more flexibility.”
Thompson, Winthrop’s coach, agrees.
“I don’t want it to become an NCAA sport,” Thompson said, “because then they control a lot more of what’s going on.”
For Clary, it boils down to money.
“It would make it a lot harder on college students to try and get deals and make college cheaper, which, at the end of the day, is the goal,” he said.
From the institution’s perspective, NCAA approval doesn’t account for much as long as it can continue to use cornhole as a strategy to drive enrollment and retention efforts.
“Adrian has a lot of sports,” Blonde said, “and I think our president is doing that to bring in more kids. We have a bass fishing team and an equestrian team, and that’s stuff you don’t normally see at a college.”
Indeed, some 70% of Adrian students compete in athletics. Cornhole is simply the latest attempt to expand that palette.
“They want kids to come here for athletics, and they want them to stay here for athletics,” Benedict said.
More broadly, Benedict expects the meteoric rise of cornhole to continue across college campuses nationwide as the sport becomes increasingly mainstream.
“I’m getting people reaching out to me saying, ‘Hey, we’re starting a program at our college. What do we need to do?'”