Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s you could not go to college and not know what a footbag is. You may not have called it a footbag but a footbag is a hackey sack and these days the footbag is making quite a comeback in popular culture. A footbag is a small bag made out of suede, usually, and filled with either sand, tiny plastic pellets, or dirt. In the 1980’s and 1990’s a footbag is identified with the counter culture of Grateful Dead hippies and college students. Photography from the era shows that a footbag is just as much a part of the entire counter culture scene as the headband was. Today a footbag is still a hackey sack but now there is specialized gear starting to come out for the footbag and it is becoming quite a market that it helping the footbag make a comeback.

Today companies are developing specialized sneakers and athletic shoes just to use while playing hackey sack and they have even gone so far as to develop athletic versions of footbag to play which, to my recollection, run against everything the footbag was said to stand for in the 1980’s and 1990’s. They have developed a game that is played on a field the size of an American football field and uses a footbag as the object of the game. A game like this requires a great deal of athletic ability and stamina and, once again, is completely opposite to what the footbag was used for in the 1980’s and 1990’s. There is also a footbag game that requires the participants to get into two separate teams and kick the footbag back and forth over a net that is 5 feet or so off of the ground. This takes tremendous skill to do and I can imagine how difficult this would be to do as a solo player much less as part of a team. Volleyball using your feet would require unbelievable skill and this game must be a blast to watch.

The footbag, or hackey sack, games I remember are the ones where you were either kicking the footbag back and forth between yourself and one other person or you would get into a circle with a group of people and the object was to keep the footbag off of the ground, and always moving, using only your feet. If two people or more kept the footbag going then they would call that volley a hack. Those that spent a great deal of time playing with the footbag became quite skilled at it and it was little wonder that people that played a lot of soccer also found themselves skilled at the footbag.

Today the footbag is a part of the hip hop industry with rap groups like G-Unit offering footbag athletic shoes as part of their line of sneakers. Footbag leagues are popping up and an international championship may not be far off. Not bad for a little game that developed from a bunch of counter culture people kicking a litte bag around to kill time and develop foot skills and a game that probably gained its largest initial acceptance on college campuses all over the United States and all over the world as well. As footbag develops it will be interesting to see what variations of the game get turned into competitive sport and how the rules for those competitive sports will be created.