CORNHOLE CON GAME!
Top players bagged in cheating scandal
ASENSATIONAL cheating scandal has rocked the world of professional cornhole, with the topranked doubles team and an opponent BOTH caught cheating during the world championships!
Dubbed “BagGate,” the sordid episode exploded when cornholer Devon Harbaugh accused the
No. 1-seeded duo, Mark Richards and Philip Lopez, of using smaller-thanregulation bags to get an edge in the finals of the ESPNbroadcasted event in Rock Hill, S.C. “I thought the bags were too thin,” Harbaugh says.
According to American Cornhole League (ACL) regulations, a cornhole bag must be 6-by-6 inches when lying on a flat surface and weigh between 14 and 16 ounces.
But with the vast sums at stake during pro events — top players can earn as much as $250,000 a season — competitors have long been suspected of manipulating their bags to gain an unfair advantage. In an ironic twist, Richards and Lopez challenged Harbaugh’s bags, and they were also found to be illegal!
“I think it’s funny that anyone believed it would be all friendships and rose petals forever in cornhole,” cracks one observer on the Addicted to Cornhole Facebook page, which claims some 85,000 members. “Now the dirty underbelly is being exposed.”
But not all cornhole fans are amused.
“This is the kind of thing that can derail the sport altogether,” warns a cornhole industry insider. “They need to clean things up — FAST!”
Long a staple of backyard barbecues, summer fairs and tailgate parties, cornhole’s popularity has proliferated in recent years, with the ACL numbering 155,000 members, up 30,000 in the last year alone! The league held 22,000 events in 2022, 8,000 more than in 2021.
The rapid growth — as well as the embarrassing incident in Rock Hill — has league officials vowing to institute a raft of changes to root out cheaters, including random bag checks and possibly even automated bag testing.
“You’re going to see some big shifts and movements in the infrastructure of the sport,” vows Eric Marvin, president of the American Cornhole Association. “This is when sports evolve.”
In the end, the undersized bags used at the 2022 world championships were determined to be “unintentional”
Harbaugh, for one, was claiming his bags wound up being illegal.
“Honestly,” he says, “it could be anything.”