Fight Songs, Mascots and Game-Day Traditions
No other American sport carries this much ritual. A pro franchise can move cities; a college tradition is anchored to a campus, a song and a hillside, and it gets handed down one senior class at a time. That is why the traditions round is the easiest place to start, even for people who could not name a starting quarterback.
These eleven questions describe what you would see and hear in the stadium and ask you to name the school. If you have ever watched a Saturday broadcast, you already know more of these than you think.
Q1.A 1930 Ford Model A Sport Coupe leads the team onto the field while the crowd sings a fight song that promises to yell "To hell with Georgia." Which school is it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Georgia Tech
The car is the Ramblin' Wreck and the song is "Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech," whose narrator is a self-described wreck and "one hell of an engineer." The car has led the Yellow Jackets out since the early 1960s.
Q2.Whose fans raise the index finger and the pinkie while tucking the two middle fingers under the thumb?Tap to reveal
Answer: Texas
The gesture is Hook 'em Horns, introduced by head cheerleader Harley Clark in 1955 to imitate the horns of a longhorn. The live mascot on the sideline is a steer named Bevo.
Q3.In which stadium can you look past the end zone and see "Touchdown Jesus"?Tap to reveal
Answer: Notre Dame Stadium
The nickname belongs to the Word of Life mural on the Hesburgh Library, finished in 1964. The central figure's raised arms happen to match the signal an official makes for a touchdown.
Q4.Which marching band finishes its signature formation when a sousaphone player "dots the i"?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ohio State's
The band spells Ohio in cursive across the field, a formation it has performed since the 1930s. Dotting the i is an honor that normally goes to a senior sousaphone player, who bows to both sides of the stadium.
Q5.A wagon pulled by two white ponies named Boomer and Sooner races across the field after a score. Whose team just scored?Tap to reveal
Answer: Oklahoma
The Sooner Schooner is driven by the RUF/NEKS spirit squad. Its most famous appearance came in the 1985 Orange Bowl, when it rolled onto the field after a field goal that had already been called back and drew a penalty.
Q6.Which school opens home games with Chief Osceola riding a horse named Renegade to midfield and planting a flaming spear?Tap to reveal
Answer: Florida State
The ritual dates to 1978, and the regalia was developed with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which has publicly endorsed the university's use of the name.
Q7.At which school do the fans sing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" after the game?Tap to reveal
Answer: West Virginia
John Denver landed on the field by helicopter and sang it at the opening of the new Mountaineer Field on September 6, 1980, the stadium that replaced the cramped 1924 original, and it has been the postgame anthem in Morgantown ever since.
Q8.Which university's live mascot is a white English bulldog named Uga?Tap to reveal
Answer: Georgia
The line began in 1956 and every Uga has come from the same Savannah family's dogs. Uga V made the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1997 as the best mascot in the country.
Q9.Whose fans shout "War Eagle!" as a live eagle circles the stadium before kickoff?Tap to reveal
Answer: Auburn
It is a battle cry, not a nickname: Auburn's teams are the Tigers. The pregame flight is flown by birds housed at the university's raptor center.
Q10.Which team's players rub Howard's Rock and run down a hill into a stadium nicknamed Death Valley?Tap to reveal
Answer: Clemson
The rock is named for coach Frank Howard and sits at the top of the hill at the east end of the stadium. Players have run down that hill since the 1940s, when the locker room was up at Fike Field House; the rock went onto its pedestal in 1966 and the rubbing began the next season. Brent Musburger called the entrance the most exciting 25 seconds in college football.
Q11.Which school's fight song is "The Victors," sung in a stadium nicknamed the Big House?Tap to reveal
Answer: Michigan
Student Louis Elbel wrote it in 1898 after a win over Chicago. Michigan Stadium is the largest stadium in the United States, seating more than 107,000.
Bowl Games and National Championships
For most of its history college football had no playoff and no single authority handing out its title. Polls, mathematical systems and competing organizations all named champions, which is why so many schools claim seasons that other schools also claim, and why arguments from the 1920s are still live.
These twelve questions cover the bowl games that stood in for a playoff and the title seasons that people still debate. A few answers are shared titles, and that is the point.
Q1.Which bowl game is the oldest in college football?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Rose Bowl
The first one was played on January 1, 1902, and Michigan beat Stanford 49-0. The result was so lopsided that organizers replaced football with chariot races and other events for years; the game returned for good in 1916.
Q2.In 1942 the Rose Bowl was played outside Pasadena for the first time. Which school's stadium hosted it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Duke
Weeks after Pearl Harbor, large gatherings on the West Coast were banned, so Duke hosted the game at Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham, North Carolina, and Oregon State won 20-16. That remained the only relocation until January 2021, when pandemic restrictions moved the game to Arlington, Texas.
Q3.In what year was the first SEC Championship Game played?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1992
The SEC split into an East and a West and became the first Division I-A league to stage a conference title game. Alabama beat Florida 28-21 and went on to win the national championship.
Q4.Which two teams played the first overtime game in major college football history?Tap to reveal
Answer: Toledo and Nevada
Toledo won 40-37 in the Las Vegas Bowl on December 14, 1995. Until then, a tied game simply stayed tied; overtime arrived in the regular season the following season.
Q5.In what year did Knute Rockne win his first national championship at Notre Dame?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1924
That was the season of the Four Horsemen backfield, and it ended with a 27-10 win over Stanford in the Rose Bowl. Rockne's career winning percentage of roughly .881 is still among the highest ever recorded by a major college coach.
Q6.USC claims its first national title for the 1928 season. Who coached that team?Tap to reveal
Answer: Howard Jones
The Trojans were picked by the Dickinson System, an early mathematical ranking. Unbeaten Georgia Tech is also recognized as a 1928 champion, which was entirely normal before the wire-service polls arrived.
Q7.LSU won its first national championship in 1958, sharing the season's honors with which Big Ten team?Tap to reveal
Answer: Iowa
Paul Dietzel's Tigers, led by Billy Cannon and a celebrated third-string defensive unit that the press of the day nicknamed the Chinese Bandits, topped the AP and UPI polls, while the Football Writers Association picked Iowa.
Q8.Which team won the 1984 national championship, finishing unbeaten with a Holiday Bowl win over Michigan?Tap to reveal
Answer: Brigham Young University
LaVell Edwards's Cougars went 13-0 and beat Michigan 24-17. It is still the only national championship in BYU history.
Q9.Which team, coached by Tom Osborne, won three national championships in the 1990s?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nebraska
The Cornhuskers took the 1994, 1995 and 1997 titles. Osborne retired after the 1997 season and later served three terms representing Nebraska in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Q10.Nebraska's first title under Osborne came in a 24-17 win over Miami. In which bowl game?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Orange Bowl
The January 1995 win gave Osborne his first title in his 22nd season as head coach. The facade of Nebraska's Memorial Stadium carries the words "Not the victory but the action; not the goal but the game; in the deed the glory."
Q11.Which team beat Miami in double overtime at the Fiesta Bowl to win the championship for the 2002 season?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ohio State
Jim Tressel's Buckeyes won 31-24 in January 2003, ending Miami's 34-game winning streak. A late pass-interference flag in the first overtime is still argued about in both states.
Q12.Which team won the national championship for the 2005 season under head coach Mack Brown?Tap to reveal
Answer: Texas
Vince Young accounted for 467 yards of offense and ran in the winning touchdown as the Longhorns beat USC 41-38 in the Rose Bowl, a game many still rate the best title game ever played.
Heisman Winners and Famous Names
The Heisman Trophy has gone to a quarterback or a running back in most years of its existence, which makes the exceptions worth knowing. It has also gone to players whose college seasons outshone anything they did afterwards, and skipped players who became legends the moment they turned pro.
These six questions cover award winners and a couple of college names that famous families brought to campus.
Q1.Charles Woodson won the 1997 Heisman Trophy playing which position?Tap to reveal
Answer: Cornerback
The Michigan defender was the first primarily defensive player to win the award. He also returned punts and caught passes on offense, and his team shared the national championship that season.
Q2.Which Oklahoma State running back won the 1988 Heisman Trophy?Tap to reveal
Answer: Barry Sanders
He ran for more than 2,600 yards and 37 rushing touchdowns in 11 games, a season so far outside the normal range that it is still the benchmark. He spent his entire professional career with the Detroit Lions.
Q3.Which Boston College quarterback threw the 1984 Hail Mary that beat Miami 47-45?Tap to reveal
Answer: Doug Flutie
On the last play of the game he threw a 48-yard pass that Gerard Phelan caught in the end zone. Flutie won the Heisman Trophy a few weeks later.
Q4.Who became Miami's second Heisman winner, six years after Vinny Testaverde?Tap to reveal
Answer: Gino Torretta
The quarterback won it in 1992, finishing ahead of San Diego State's Marshall Faulk. Testaverde had won in 1986.
Q5.Which reggae legend's son played linebacker for the Miami Hurricanes in the early 1990s?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bob Marley's
Rohan Marley was undersized even by the standards of the time and started at linebacker anyway, playing on Miami teams that were among the best in the country.
Q6.Walter Payton's son Jarrett played college football at which school?Tap to reveal
Answer: Miami
He was a running back for the Hurricanes and a national champion with the 2001 team, played extensively at tailback in 2002 and ran for 985 yards in 2003. His father, Walter Payton, had played at Jackson State, so Miami was his own pick rather than a family one.
The Miami Hurricanes Dynasty
Between 1983 and 2001 Miami won five national championships under four different head coaches. The Hurricanes also produced the era's loudest rivalries, and much of what casual fans remember about 1980s and 1990s college football is really a memory of playing Miami.
This round is for people who watched those teams. Eight questions on the titles, the rivalry kicks and the bird.
Q1.How many national championships did Miami win during the 1980s?Tap to reveal
Answer: Three, in 1983, 1987 and 1989
Each came under a different head coach: Howard Schnellenberger, Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson. A fourth title followed in 1991.
Q2.Miami went 11-1 in the 2000 season but did not play for the national title. Which rival went instead, despite having lost to Miami head-to-head?Tap to reveal
Answer: Florida State
The ranking formula of the day put Florida State in the championship game even though the Hurricanes had beaten them during the season. Miami settled for a Sugar Bowl win over Florida and won the title outright the following year.
Q3.Which team beat Miami in the Sugar Bowl after the 1992 season, ending the Hurricanes' long winning streak?Tap to reveal
Answer: Alabama
Alabama won 34-13 on January 1, 1993, stopping a 29-game Miami streak and taking the school's first title since the Bear Bryant era. George Teague stripping the ball from Lamar Thomas on a long catch is the play everyone replays.
Q4.Who was the first coach to win two national championships at Miami?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dennis Erickson
He won in 1989 and 1991, his first and third seasons in charge.
Q5.Which Miami coach won a national championship in his first season and then went unbeaten in the regular season again in his second?Tap to reveal
Answer: Larry Coker
Coker's 2001 team went 12-0 and won the title; his 2002 team also went 12-0 in the regular season before losing the championship game to Ohio State in double overtime.
Q6.How many "Wide Right" field goal misses defined the Miami-Florida State rivalry between 1991 and 2004?Tap to reveal
Answer: Four
Gerry Thomas in 1991, Dan Mowrey in 1992, Matt Munyon in 2000 and Xavier Beitia in the January 2004 Orange Bowl all pushed a late kick right with the game on the line. Beitia had also missed left in the 2002 meeting, which the rivalry files separately as Wide Left, and the phrase became shorthand for the whole series.
Q7.What is the name of the ibis that serves as Miami's mascot?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sebastian
He is named after San Sebastian Hall, a campus residence hall. The ibis was chosen because folklore holds that it is the last bird to take shelter before a hurricane and the first to reappear afterwards.
Q8.After winning Miami's first national championship, Howard Schnellenberger became head coach at which university?Tap to reveal
Answer: Louisville
He left after the 1983 title, spent a season on a professional venture that never played a game, and took over at Louisville in 1985, building a program that won the 1991 Fiesta Bowl. Louisville's football complex is named for him.
Legendary Coaches and the Bear Bryant Era
College football remembers coaches the way other sports remember players, because a coach can stay for 25 years while every roster turns over. Woody Hayes, Bobby Bowden and Paul "Bear" Bryant each became more identified with a school than any player who suited up for them.
Bryant is the deepest well of stories, so the round finishes with him: the nickname, the enlistment, the six titles and the record he held for a generation. Thirteen questions, and the last few are the hardest on the page.
Q1.Which coach led Ohio State's football team for 28 seasons?Tap to reveal
Answer: Woody Hayes
He coached the Buckeyes from 1951 through 1978, winning 205 games, 13 Big Ten titles and five national championships. He was fired after striking an opposing player on the sideline at the 1978 Gator Bowl.
Q2.Who was Florida State's head coach immediately before Bobby Bowden?Tap to reveal
Answer: Darrell Mudra
Mudra went 4-18 across the 1974 and 1975 seasons. Bowden arrived in 1976 and stayed for 34 years.
Q3.Bear Bryant was head coach at three universities before Alabama. Which of these was not one of them: Maryland, Kentucky, Texas A&M or Texas Tech?Tap to reveal
Answer: Texas Tech
He coached Maryland for the 1945 season, Kentucky from 1946 to 1953 and Texas A&M from 1954 to 1957, then went to Alabama in 1958.
Q4.Where was Paul "Bear" Bryant born?Tap to reveal
Answer: Moro Bottom, Arkansas
He was born on September 11, 1913, the eleventh of twelve children, on farmland outside the town of Fordyce.
Q5.How did Paul Bryant get the nickname "Bear"?Tap to reveal
Answer: He wrestled a muzzled carnival bear as a teenager
The stunt took place at a theater in Fordyce, Arkansas, for the promise of a dollar a minute. By his own account he never collected the money, and he never liked the nickname that stuck for the rest of his life.
Q6.Bryant had just been offered a head-coaching job when the United States entered World War II. What did he do instead of taking it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Turned it down and enlisted in the U.S. Navy
The job was at Arkansas. He enlisted instead, coached at a Navy pre-flight school in Georgia, was later stationed in North Africa, and came back to take the head job at Maryland in 1945.
Q7.In what year did Bryant become head coach at the University of Alabama?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1958
He had played end for Alabama in the 1930s, which is why the job mattered so much to him. He stayed 25 seasons.
Q8.What did Bryant say to explain leaving Texas A&M for Alabama?Tap to reveal
Answer: "Mama called"
The full line was: "I left Texas A&M because my school called me. Mama called, and when Mama calls, then you just have to come running." He did not leave for money.
Q9.How many national championships did Alabama win under Bryant?Tap to reveal
Answer: Six
They came in 1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978 and 1979.
Q10.Bryant's Alabama teams ran the wishbone offense from 1971 onward. Who devised that formation?Tap to reveal
Answer: Emory Bellard
Bellard created it as an assistant to Darrell Royal at Texas in the late 1960s. Royal walked Bryant through it, and Alabama won three national titles running it.
Q11.Bryant's record-setting 315th career win, in 1981, came against which rival?Tap to reveal
Answer: Auburn
Alabama won 28-17 on November 28, 1981, moving him past Amos Alonzo Stagg's 314 victories. Auburn was coached by Pat Dye, a former Bryant assistant. The all-time wins record has since passed to other coaches.
Q12.Which actor played Bryant in the 1984 biographical film "The Bear"?Tap to reveal
Answer: Gary Busey
It was the first feature portrayal of him. Tom Berenger later played Bryant in "The Junction Boys," and a Bryant character appears briefly in "Forrest Gump."
Q13.In what year did Bryant die?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1983
He died on January 26, 1983, in Tuscaloosa, four weeks after coaching his last game, a Liberty Bowl win over Illinois.
How to Run a College Football Trivia Night
The five rounds above are already sorted by difficulty, which is the whole trick to hosting: open with traditions so everyone scores, and save the Bryant round for when the lead needs breaking. Read each question aloud, take answers on paper to stop the fastest talker from winning, and read the explanation afterwards, because the explanation is the part people repeat later.
Split the room into teams of two to four and give a point per correct answer. A second point for anyone who can add the detail in the "why" line rewards the fans who actually know the sport rather than the ones who guess quickly. For tiebreakers, use a number the page can settle: the year of the first Rose Bowl, the win that took Bryant past Amos Alonzo Stagg, the size of Michigan Stadium. Closest guess takes it.
If your group skews toward one conference, run the rounds in a different order and finish with whichever section covers their school, so the night ends on an argument they want to have. Rivalry questions do the same job: the Wide Right round tends to start a conversation that outlasts the scoring.
You can also play these college football trivia questions online for free at Trivio.NET, where answers and facts are built in, so you can host from a phone or put them up on the big screen without printing anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many college football trivia questions are on this page?
There are 50, split into five rounds: game-day traditions, bowl games and national championships, Heisman winners and famous names, the Miami Hurricanes dynasty, and legendary coaches including Bear Bryant.
Are these college football trivia questions free to print or use?
Yes. Every question, answer and explanation on this page is free to read, print and use for a tailgate, classroom warm-up, bar trivia night or family game.
How hard are the questions?
The rounds get harder as you read. The traditions round is answerable by anyone who watches a Saturday broadcast; the championship, Miami and Bryant rounds are aimed at fans who follow the sport closely.
Why do several schools claim the same national championship?
Before the poll era, and again before the playoff, champions were named by wire-service polls, coaches' votes, football writers and mathematical systems such as the Dickinson System, and those selectors often disagreed. That is why 1928 belongs to both USC and Georgia Tech and why 1958 is shared by LSU and Iowa.
Can I play these questions as a quiz online?
Yes. You can play college football trivia and hundreds of other free quizzes at Trivio.NET, including daily questions and real-time head-to-head matches.
