The game is a spin-off of a similar game, also called pong, played at Dartmouth College.

The most common modern version of the game is played without paddles and has a murkier beginning. The Daily Princetonian the student newspaper of Princeton University attributed the naming of the paddle-less game where balls are thrown into cups to the early 1980s at Bucknell or Lehigh University Some students at Lafaette College rivals of Lehigh, insist modern, paddle-less beer pong was invented at their school, but The Lafaette, the college's student newspaper, says there is no proof to back up the assertion