Cornhole at the Olympics? How the Midwestern yard sport became a summer sensation

Josh Thielen used to hate cornhole. Now, he plays the backyard sport professionally.

Thielen grew up in Detroit Lakes and played "bags," as it's often called in Minnesota, while tailgating for Vikings games, dueling with his two younger brothers who always seemed to win. It wasn't until Thielen moved to Livermore, Calif., six years ago that he started to take cornhole seriously by entering bar competitions.

Then, during the pandemic, he hunkered down, tossing bean bags on his driveway all summer and down the hallway all winter. In 2021, he officially became a professional player in the American Cornhole League.

Now, "I can not only compete with good players," he said. "I can compete with the best players."

The roster of pros like Thielen is expanding. According to the ACL, the league hosts 25,000 events each year, with 200,000 active players and 256 full-time pros. The sport now has its own World Cup and is taking steps to become officially internationally recognized. The ACL says cornhole could become an Olympic sport by 2032.

Unlike other sports, cornhole doesn't demand supreme athletic ability, or even much practice. And it's the accessibility that, like pickleball or bowling, has built cornhole into a seasonal sensation.

Just a board and bags

The simplicity of the sport makes it hard to find an exact history.

One theory credits a 19th century Kentucky farmer named Jebediah McGillicuddy. Another says that it started with a Bavarian cabinetmaker who made boards for his children after watching them throw stones into a ground hole. Another theory says it started later, in Native American tribes in the American Midwest.

All we know for sure, said Trey Ryder the chief marketing officer for the American Cornhole League, is that its modern form took shape in Ohio and Kentucky in the late 1960s. The name — admittedly, sometimes hard to take seriously — comes from the fact that bags were originally stuffed with corn.

These days, cornhole bags are typically filled with a plastic resin, because it turns out corn isn't all that sustainable of a solution for an outdoor, largely rural sport.

"If you get them wet, they're done — you can't use them anymore, because they puff up like a balloon," Ryder said. "And sometimes, even worse: The critters love to eat corn."

Carol Erickson, a 64-year-old Victoria resident, plays cornhole a few times a year, typically with her family at their cabin near Grand Rapids. Her late father built homemade cornhole sets for almost everyone in the family.

"You can have a hour and play some cornhole," Erickson said. "Or I can play my seven-year-old grandkid and have a good time."

The camaraderie has Thielen hooked, too. Often, he finds himself tossing bags at 5 a.m. with friends, unable to stop playing.

"It's very addictive," he said.

Under the bright lights

This year, Thielen played professional cornhole in his home state for the first time, competing in the ACL SuperHole Prelim hosted in Ramsey, Minn., in June. Professional cornhole is nothing like the lawn game Midwesterners are used to.

At a taping for an ACL cornhole shootout, it's a spectacle. There are shining LED stage lights, full bleachers, an ESPN broadcast crew, T-shirt tosses, TV timeouts and corporate sponsors.

There are 40 different league-approved bean bag manufacturers, each with different fabric surfaces depending on the thrower's desired friction and air resistance. There are specific types of shots — airmails, blockers, pushers, bullies, slides, rolls. There are jerseys, brackets, signature beverages and celebrity cameos.

In the Ramsey tournament, Thielen faced off in doubles matches against Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte, "Friday Night Lights" actor Scott Porter and Vikings running back Alexander Mattison. His teammate was Bravo TV host Kyle Cooke.

The league motto is "Anyone can play, anyone can win," and it's tough to argue. The age range of ACL pros is 13 to 69, and the league's sixth-ranked cornhole singles player is 14-year-old Jakob Gore.

Unlike many — any? — nationally televised sports, cornhole's casual spirit remains alive and well. Behind the curtains, an hour before the match, competitors ordered drinks while they warmed up their arms. Many play wearing headphones, while others listen to the bass-boosted pop rap tunes mixed by the in-house DJ: ACL commissioner Stacey Moore.

Moore came up with the idea to start the league in 2015, after playing cornhole for years at North Carolina State football tailgates. As a casual — and self-proclaimed "not good" — bag tosser, Moore was bewildered by others getting so competitive.

"Throwing a bag in one hand with a beer in the other hand, I started meeting people that were taking this game way too seriously," he said. "The more I started watching it, and started talking to players who were playing it competitively, I became convinced it could be a legitimate sport."

Cornhole's national audience expanded in 2020, when it was among the first U.S. sports to resume during the pandemic. ESPN picked up broadcasts all summer long, and just two years later, an estimated 222,000 people watched the 2022 ACL World Championship on ESPN. The league says they have more than 200 TV broadcasts every year.

Ryder said the ACL has leagues in 15 different countries. They've done European tours and the World Cornhole Organization is hosting a World Cup in Paris in September. Ryder said that because of the low financial commitment to play, the sport has no ceiling.

"We got the Olympics in sight," Moore said. "2032, I'm hoping, will be our time."

In order to get there, cornhole needs to cement a larger pop cultural footprint. But don't worry, Moore has a plan for that, too.

"We need our own reality series on Netflix," he said. "The more people can get to know our pros personally, and get attached to our different storylines, I think it's going to expand."