New York Times – Floppy Little Footbag is Big Game on Campus (1984)

One from the more distant archives. This one is an article in the New York Times, mainly about the popularity of the hack circle and similar activities, such as juggling, taking off on campuses around the time. Some quotes from Gerg Cortopassi, co-founder of World Footbag Association.

Read the full article here.

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 11— The object is a small, floppy sphere that lies inert wherever it falls, but it has started students leaping and kicking and, according to one professor here, ”feeling better about themselves” on campuses around the country.

At Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania it is called a Hacky Sack, at the University of Delaware a footbag.

By whatever name, it is the instrument of a new sport with ancient Oriental roots that moved down the West Coast, crossed the country to East Coast colleges and now, proponents say, is beginning to find converts from Europe to the Far East.

By May it had grown so popular that it gained its own national organization, the World Footbag Association, based in Portland, Ore., whose officials estimate that as many as five million Americans are playing forms of the sport.