Rhode Island NBC I-Team Investigates Dangerous New Game Called "Beer Pong"

What a week for Old People Discoveries: On Monday, the New York Times alerted the world to a curious new trend called "planking," and yesterday, NBC's Providence affiliate launched a special investigative report into the "potential dangers" of a "new game" called beer pong.

Beer pong. Heard of it? You probably have. Actually, if you're from New England and of a certain age, there's around a 70 percent chance that you once played it in a URI frat house, about 30 miles from where NBC's chief I-Team correspondent, Jim Taricani, filed his report on the "potentially dangerous drinking game":

With a variety of rules, the idea is to shoot a ping pong ball into a cup of beer or water and be rewarded by getting to drink the beer out of the 16 ounce cups or claiming a pot of money or, as our undercover producer found, getting a shot of booze when you win.

The pot of money, actually, is news to me.

The state of Rhode Island takes what Taricani calls "aggressive drinking" very seriously. They've banned both happy hours and pub crawls over the years, and now the kids have come up with a whole new way of drinking alcohol in an aggressive manner. (A hunch: Kids will always come up with new ways to drink aggressively.) Taricani says the state is already considering outlawing bar-sponsored beer pong tournaments as well, which is a shame, since they only just discovered it yesterday.

NBC 10's investigation is ongoing. Hold onto your flip cups, Rhode Island.

I-Team: Dangers of beer pong [NBC 10]