40 Fun Facts About Eastern Kentucky University

A 1985 smuggling flight by EKU law enforcement graduate Andrew Thornton inspired which 2023 film?

Cocaine Bear is based on the black bear found dead after eating drugs dropped from Thornton's plane. He died the same night when his parachute failed over Knoxville.

Which 1962 EKU graduate starred in the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man and The Fall Guy?

Lee Majors came to Eastern as a football player, but a severe back injury ended his athletic career and turned him toward acting.

EKU criminal justice graduate Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister of which country in 2001?

Thailand elected the former police officer in 2001, and after he was overthrown in 2006 he bought the English football club Manchester City.

Which SportsCenter anchor attended EKU on a basketball scholarship before transferring to Dayton?

Dan Patrick spent two years at Eastern, then went on air in Dayton under his real surname, Pugh, before anchoring SportsCenter from 1989 to 2006.

Eastern Kentucky alumnus Earle Combs batted leadoff for which baseball team's fabled 1927 lineup?

New York Yankees fans knew that lineup as Murderers' Row, with Combs in center field beside Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. His own nickname was the Kentucky Colonel.

A statue of which frontiersman, cast in 1967 from an Enid Yandell sculpture, stands on EKU's campus?

Daniel Boone founded a fort nearby in 1775. Yandell's original nine-foot statue was made for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and Louisville has a bronze cast too.

Which coach won 314 games and two national titles leading Eastern Kentucky football from 1964 to 2002?

Roy Kidd turned down a football scholarship from the University of Kentucky because Eastern's coaches would let him play baseball too.

Which longtime Good Morning America weather anchor earned a broadcast news degree at EKU?

Sam Champion, a Paducah native, left ABC in 2013 to become managing editor of The Weather Channel before later returning to the network.

Which nickname did EKU teams use from 1909 until they became the Colonels in 1963?

Maroons came from the school color, in use since Eastern opened in 1906. President Robert Martin made the switch, and the Kentucky Colonel became the official mascot.

Former EKU art student Laura Kirkpatrick finished runner-up in 2009 on which reality competition?

America's Next Top Model had been out of reach because she stood half an inch under its usual height cutoff, until cycle 13 was cast as a petite edition.

EKU's football rivalry with which school, first played in 1914, is known as the Battle of the Bluegrass?

Western Kentucky visits drew the five largest crowds in the history of Eastern's stadium, led by 25,300 for an 8–6 Colonels win in 1979.

EKU opened in 1906 as a state normal school, an institution created to train which professionals?

Teachers were almost the only graduates for decades: Kentucky lawmakers did not authorize Eastern to offer other kinds of degrees until after World War II.

EKU basketball coach Paul McBrayer spent nine seasons as an assistant to which college coaching great?

Adolph Rupp kept McBrayer on his Kentucky staff for nine seasons, from 1934 to 1943. Eastern hired McBrayer in 1946, and he took the team to two NCAA tournaments.

EKU's radio station WEKU, on the air since 1968, is a charter member of which broadcasting network?

NPR counts WEKU among its founding member stations, and the signal now covers northern, central and eastern Kentucky with news and talk.

Richmond, home of Eastern Kentucky University, is the seat of which county, named for a future US president?

Madison County took James Madison's name in 1785, long before his presidency, and it is also home to Berea College.

EKU's campus once belonged to Central University, which merged in 1901 with which Danville school?

Centre College absorbed its Presbyterian rival, leaving a 40-acre campus in Richmond empty. A boys' prep school used it for five years before the state chose it for Eastern.

The clock tower that is EKU's best-known landmark tops a building named for which Kentucky governor?

Keen Johnson owned Richmond's newspaper and is the only journalist to have served as Kentucky's governor. His building opened as the student union.

Which widow of Eastern Kentucky's first president signed diplomas for the first graduating class in 1909?

Mary Roark served as acting president for a year and then as dean of women. Eastern's regents formally recognized her as the second president only in 2015.

EKU's Richmond campus lies about 25 miles south, along I-75, of which city, the second largest in Kentucky?

Lexington is an easy drive up the interstate, so Eastern can pitch Richmond as a quiet town with a city of more than 300,000 people close by.

EKU football capped a perfect 13–0 season in 1982 by beating which school 17–14 for the national title?

Delaware fell in the Pioneer Bowl at Wichita Falls, Texas, making the Colonels the first program to win two I-AA crowns.

The Old Hawg Rifle was the trophy in EKU's football rivalry with which fellow Kentucky public university?

Morehead State has kept the rifle on display in its student center, though the two teams stopped playing for it after 1962.

EKU was a founding member in 1948 of which athletic conference, where the Colonels stayed for 73 years?

Ohio Valley plans were first sketched in 1941 by three officials, one of them Eastern's athletic director. The Colonels left for the ASUN in 2021.

EKU's baseball field honors former coach Charles Hughes, who was known by which bird nickname?

Turkey Hughes also served as Eastern's athletic director, and the ballpark around his field was renamed for Hall of Famer Earle Combs in 2017.

EKU graduate Homer Ledford, whose work is in the Smithsonian, built thousands of which folk instrument?

Dulcimers made his name among musicians worldwide, and he invented a hybrid he named the dulcitar. Eastern awarded him an honorary doctorate days after his death in 2006.

Which novelist, an EKU English graduate, wrote Clay's Quilt and A Parchment of Leaves?

Silas House set his first three novels in a fictional Crow County, based on the mountain county where he spent much of his childhood.

Sprinter and EKU graduate Dallas Robinson competed at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in which sport?

Bobsled gave Robinson two Olympic starts in Sochi, 11th in the two-man and 10th in the four-man. He had earlier been in the USA Rugby player pool.

EKU opened a campus in 2004 in which Kentucky city, home of the café where Kentucky Fried Chicken began?

Corbin is where Harland Sanders ran the café that is now a museum in his name. Eastern's other regional campuses are in Hazard and Manchester.

EKU alumnus Steve Smith won 1,231 games and nine national titles coaching basketball at which prep school?

Oak Hill Academy, in the community of Mouth of Wilson, kept Smith for 37 seasons, and its national crowns under him ran from 1993 to 2016.

EKU graduate Eula Bingham ran which federal agency under Jimmy Carter, scrapping over 1,000 petty rules?

OSHA under Bingham dropped rules on items like toilet seats and turned to real hazards, giving workers a right to know what substances they were exposed to.

Yeremiah Bell left a steel mill job to walk on at EKU, then made the Pro Bowl with which NFL team?

The Miami Dolphins drafted Bell in the sixth round in 2003, and he stayed nine seasons after sitting out his rookie year without playing a game.

Four-star general James Rainey, who led Army Futures Command, attended EKU on a scholarship in which sport?

Swimming paid Rainey's way to a 1987 degree, and he left Eastern with an ROTC commission as an infantry officer on the way to commanding the 3rd Infantry Division.

Bob Kustra resigned as lieutenant governor of which state in 1998 to become EKU's president?

Illinois lost Kustra to Richmond, where he merged nine colleges into five. He left after three years and later spent 15 as president of Boise State.

Which governor, once a student on the same Richmond campus, signed the 1906 law creating EKU's forerunner?

J. C. W. Beckham had studied at Central University before quitting at 17 to support his widowed mother. He became governor after William Goebel was assassinated.

Glenn Presnell, EKU's football coach from 1954 to 1963, won the 1935 NFL title playing for which team?

Detroit Lions teammates saw Presnell kick a 54-yard field goal in 1934, an NFL record that stood for 19 years. He was the last survivor of the Lions' first team.

Which EKU graduate, author of The Birds of Opulence, was named Kentucky's poet laureate in 2021?

Crystal Wilkinson was brought to her grandparents' Kentucky farm at six weeks old, and that childhood runs through her book Blackberries, Blackberries.

EKU's 1954 football team went unbeaten until a 7–6 loss to Omaha in which game on January 1, 1955?

Tangerine Bowl heartbreak came down to a missed extra point: Eastern answered Omaha's first-quarter touchdown in the second quarter but could not tie the score.

EKU master's graduate Richie Bancells was head athletic trainer from 1988 to 2017 for which baseball team?

Baltimore Orioles ironman Cal Ripken Jr. began his pro career on Bancells's first day on the job, and Bancells is widely credited with helping his 2,632-game streak.

Former Eastern Kentucky University professor Carl Hurley became nationally known in which second career?

Comedian Carl Hurley taught at Eastern before leaving the classroom for the stage, touring nationally as a humorist and lecturer.

Under President Joanne Glasser, EKU launched a management degree accredited by which sports body?

PGA accreditation made Eastern's Professional Golf Management degree one of only a few in the nation, launched in the same years as degrees in Homeland Security.

EKU won its first Division I-AA football title in 1979 by beating which Pennsylvania school 30–7 in Orlando?

Lehigh never got close, but the semifinal did: Eastern needed double overtime to get past Nevada 33–30 and reach the final.