59 Fun Facts About MSU Trivia: Michigan State University

Which subjects did Michigan State's first curriculum leave out?

Latin and Greek. Dropping the classical languages opened the college to farm boys who had never studied them, and every student did three hours of manual work a day instead to help pay his way.

What do Michigan State students famously do to 'The Rock', a boulder on campus?

Repaint it constantly. Student groups cover the class of 1873's boulder with a new message almost every night, and the paint is now so thick that fallen slabs of it have been cut into 'Spartan Agate' jewellery.

Michigan State's main campus is in which city?

East Lansing. The college came first: the town that grew up around it only became a city, under its present name, in 1907, half a century after classes began.

The MSU campus is built along the banks of which waterway?

Red Cedar River. The fight song opens on its banks, and it splits the campus in two because a 1926 plan kept classrooms north of the water and sent the farms and sports grounds south.

Michigan State became a land-grant college in 1863 under which federal law, passed the year before?

Morrill Act. The law copied the college rather than the other way round: Michigan State, already eight years old, is regarded as the prototype for the land-grant schools it created.

Until 1959, which body governed Michigan State University?

State Board of Agriculture stayed the governing body's name long after farming stopped being the only subject. Voters renamed it the Board of Trustees in 1959, five years before the university dropped 'Agriculture' from its own name.

MSU's contiguous campus covers roughly how many acres?

5,200 acres makes it one of the biggest campuses in the country, yet fewer than half of those acres are built on: only about 2,000 count as developed.

What are Michigan State's official colours?

Green and white are 'the only colors' the fight song tells Spartans to fight for; a student cheerleader, Francis Irving Lankey, composed it in 1915, when the school was still Michigan Agricultural College.

In 2004 Sparty became the first Big Ten mascot to win what?

The UCA national championship for mascots is judged on a video and a live skit. Sparty defended it in 2005, beating Minnesota's Goldy Gopher and Wisconsin's Bucky Badger, and won again in 2007.

Why was the original 'Spartan' campus statue cast in terra cotta instead of metal?

Wartime rationing of bronze is the usual account, and MSU's archives call the metal shortage the most likely reason. The result is thought to be the world's tallest free-standing ceramic statue; a bronze copy replaced it outdoors in 2005.

Which Spartan defensive end, later a film actor, was the first pick of the 1967 NFL draft?

Bubba Smith had Spartan Stadium crowds chanting 'Kill, Bubba, Kill'. He later played Hightower in the Police Academy films.

Sportswriter George S. Alderton chose "Spartans" as the team name in the 1920s instead of what alternative?

Michigan Staters won a contest to replace 'Aggies', but Alderton found it too clumsy for newspaper copy. He picked 'Spartans' from the losing entries and slipped it into his reports from a 1926 baseball tour.

In 1953, its first season of Big Ten football, Michigan State went to the Rose Bowl and beat which team?

UCLA scored the first 14 points, but a blocked punt returned for a touchdown turned the game and the Spartans won 28-20.

Which Michigan governor donated the trophy that Michigan State and Michigan have played football for since 1953?

G. Mennen Williams gave it to mark the Spartans' first Big Ten meeting with their rival, which they won 14-6. Michigan cared so little that after winning it in 1954 the team left it on the field for half an hour.

What do Michigan State and Michigan play for in their annual football game?

Paul Bunyan Trophy: a four-foot wooden lumberjack on a five-foot base. Michigan cared so little for it that its 1954 and 1955 wins went unengraved until the Spartans won it back in 1956 and added them.

The Land Grant Trophy, first contested in 1993, goes to the winner of the Spartans' game against which school?

Coaches George Perles and Joe Paterno designed it themselves, which may explain why it is routinely called the ugliest trophy in college football.

Michigan State and Notre Dame play football for which prize, introduced in 1949?

Megaphone Trophy: its most famous year produced no new winner, because the 1966 'Game of the Century' between the two schools ended level.

The 1966 'Game of the Century' between Michigan State and Notre Dame ended in what score?

10–10 it stayed: with the ball on its own 30 and about a minute and a half left, Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian ran out the clock rather than risk a turnover, a choice he was criticised for and kept having to defend.

Who coached four of Michigan State's six claimed football national titles?

Duffy Daugherty's teams earned the claims for 1955, 1957, 1965 and 1966. His 1966 squad was so loaded that it supplied four of the first eight picks in the next NFL draft.

Which coach won Michigan State's first football national titles, in 1951 and 1952, then became its athletic director?

Biggie Munn quit coaching at the top: straight after winning the Rose Bowl in his first Big Ten season he moved up to athletic director, a job he kept until 1971.

Michigan State's 20–17 win in the 1988 Rose Bowl under George Perles came against which team?

USC had already lost to the Spartans once that season, 27-13 in the opener, so the Rose Bowl was a rematch; linebacker Percy Snow was named the game's outstanding player.

Which coach holds the Michigan State football record for most wins, with 114?

Mark Dantonio broke a record that had stood since 1972 when he won his 110th game in September 2019, then retired the following February with 114 wins and three Big Ten titles.

After the 1999 regular season, Nick Saban abruptly left Michigan State to run which program?

LSU hired him before the bowl game, so an assistant coached the Citrus Bowl and beat Florida 37-34. Saban himself had gone 0-3 in bowls with the Spartans.

When Spartan Stadium opened in 1923, what was it called?

It became Macklin Field in 1935 and Macklin Stadium in 1948 before taking its current name in 1957.

The 1979 NCAA final, the highest-rated basketball telecast on record, pitted the Spartans against which Indiana State star?

Larry Bird's Sycamores arrived 33-0 and ranked first, but the Spartans beat them 75-64. The broadcast drew a 24.1 rating, the highest on record for a basketball game.

Which sophomore point guard led Michigan State to the 1979 NCAA basketball title?

Magic Johnson was the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player and went first in that summer's NBA draft. He had been 'Magic' since he was 15, when a sportswriter watched him post a triple-double for Everett High.

Who was named Most Outstanding Player when Michigan State beat Florida for the 2000 NCAA title?

Mateen Cleaves sprained an ankle with just over 16 minutes left, limped to the locker room in tears, then came back and led the run that settled the 89–76 win.

Tom Izzo became Michigan State's head basketball coach in 1995, succeeding whom?

Jud Heathcote, coach of the 1979 champions, took Izzo on as a part-time assistant in 1983 and recommended him for the job when he retired after 19 seasons.

Tom Izzo grew up in Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula alongside which future NFL head coach?

Steve Mariucci and Izzo were born in Iron Mountain in the same year and both went on to Northern Michigan University, where Mariucci played quarterback and Izzo had to walk on to the basketball team.

In June 2010 Tom Izzo turned down an offer to coach which NBA team?

Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, an MSU graduate, made the offer. Saying he was staying 'for life', Izzo added that he hoped a certain 6-8 forward in Cleveland would stay home too; LeBron James left weeks later.

What is the student section at the Breslin Center called?

The Izzone takes its name from head coach Tom Izzo, and has grown into a block of several thousand students filling parts of both the lower and upper bowls.

Spartan great Draymond Green, whose No. 23 was retired in 2019, grew up in which Michigan city?

Saginaw's Green lasted until the 35th pick of the 2012 draft, then became the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year in 2017 and a four-time champion with Golden State.

Washington drafted Spartan Kirk Cousins in 2012 three rounds after which quarterback?

Robert Griffin III was Offensive Rookie of the Year, but injuries let Cousins, the 102nd pick, take his job in 2015 and win the division.

Whose late goal won Michigan State's 2007 NCAA hockey title?

Justin Abdelkader broke a 1–1 tie with 18.9 seconds left against Boston College, and an empty-netter made it 3–1. The Spartans had trailed until midway through the final period.

Zeke the Wonder Dog, who first performed at halftime in Spartan Stadium in 1977, is famous for doing what?

Catching Frisbees: the original Zeke started the act in 1977, and after a gap of about twenty years the athletic department brought it back with a new dog in the early 2000s.

Beaumont Tower's 49 bells form which instrument?

A carillon is what the tower's original ten-bell chime became as bells were added from 1930 on. The athletic department ran it at first, hoping the music would stir spirit in its athletes.

Beaumont Tower marks the site of which demolished building, the first ever constructed on the campus?

College Hall was so badly built, with hollow bricks, that two of its walls collapsed in August 1918 while 'The Star-Spangled Banner' was being played on the drill ground nearby.

Which sculptor, whose Atlas stands at Rockefeller Center, carved 'The Sower' relief on Beaumont Tower?

Lee Lawrie's Art Deco relief carries the words 'Whatsoever a Man Soweth', honouring both the college's farming origins and the early teachers who sowed knowledge there.

The W. J. Beal Botanical Garden, established in 1873, claims which distinction among American university botanical gardens?

Oldest still running is the garden's own billing. It began as a teaching plot of 140 forage grasses and clovers, and the 'wild garden' Beal added four years later grew into today's collection.

MSU botanist William Beal ran cross-pollination trials in the 1870s that helped pioneer which crop?

Hybrid corn: prompted by Charles Darwin's work on hybrid vigour, Beal became one of the first to show that crossing two varieties gave a bigger harvest than either parent.

Barnett Rosenberg discovered cisplatin in 1965 after a platinum compound stopped which bacterium from dividing?

E. coli was only meant to show how electric fields affect cell growth. The bacteria grew into long strands instead of dividing, and the cause turned out to be platinum from the electrodes; the drug won FDA approval in 1978.

In the 1930s MSU dairy scientist G. Malcolm Trout improved the process for doing what to milk?

Homogenizing it: Trout is credited with helping make homogenized milk practical in the early 1930s by showing the milk should be pasteurized first.

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, completed in 2022, is funded chiefly by which arm of the federal government?

Department of Energy money comes through its Office of Science, which counts the accelerator among its national user facilities. The cyclotron lab it replaced had been funded mainly by the National Science Foundation.

Which architect designed the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, which opened on campus in 2012?

Zaha Hadid, a Pritzker Prize winner, wrapped it in pleated stainless steel and glass. In 2014 the building served as a filming location for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

What is the name of the independent student paper at MSU?

The State News dates from 1909 and is published by its own nonprofit, so the university neither funds it nor gets any say over what its student editors print.

John Hannah, MSU's longest-serving president, also became the first chairman of which federal body?

US Commission on Civil Rights: Hannah chaired the new body under Eisenhower and Kennedy without giving up his day job, running a university that grew to nearly 40,000 students on his watch.

Cowles House, one of MSU's original faculty houses, was later converted into what?

The president's official residence began in 1857 as a modest 'farm cottage' for faculty and is now the oldest building still standing on campus; botanist William Beal was among its early tenants.

Which Michigan-born director began making movies with fellow student Rob Tapert at Michigan State?

Sam Raimi and Tapert worked closely with English professor William Vincent on campus before making their cult hit The Evil Dead; Raimi later directed three Spider-Man films.

MSU alumnus and professor Jim Cash co-wrote which 1986 blockbuster?

Top Gun was written long-distance: Cash stayed on campus teaching film while Jack Epps Jr., a former student who had begged his way into Cash's screenwriting class, worked from Los Angeles.

Which novel by MSU graduate Richard Ford was the first to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award?

Independence Day, the sequel to The Sportswriter, won both in 1996. Ford had enrolled at Michigan State to study hotel management before switching to English.

Which novelist, who joined his rock band while at Michigan State, wrote Bird Box?

Josh Malerman joined the band that became The High Strung as a student, filling notebooks with poems and book ideas; the band's song 'The Luck You Got' became the theme of the US series Shameless.

Which star of The Godfather attended Michigan State?

James Caan came to MSU in 1956 to study economics and play football, left after two years for Hofstra and found acting there; his breakthrough was playing a footballer, Brian Piccolo, in Brian's Song.

Michigan State beat Notre Dame in overtime in 2010 with a fake field goal named after which film?

Little Giants: with a 46-yard kick lined up to tie the game, the holder stood up and threw a 29-yard touchdown pass instead. The coach, who names his trick plays after movies, had added it only three days earlier.

Which course did Michigan State add for women in 1896?

Home economics arrived after campaigning by Grange leader Mary Mayo, with science classes on the timetable. To house the new students, the college turned a men's dormitory, Abbot Hall, over to women.

Whose 1946 withdrawal from the Big Ten opened the seat Michigan State later filled?

Chicago had already given up football and quit the conference early in 1946. President John Hannah, who had been lobbying for a place for years, then beat Pittsburgh and Nebraska to the empty seat.

In 2001 a world-record crowd filled Spartan Stadium to watch Michigan State face Michigan in which sport?

Ice hockey: about 74,500, then the biggest crowd the sport had seen, watched 'The Cold War' on a rink laid over the football field. A Spartan freshman tied it 3–3 in the final minute with his goalie pulled.

Why did Michigan State and Saint Louis share the 1967 NCAA soccer title?

Weather stopped the final with the score 0–0, so both teams were named champions. A year later the Spartans shared the title again, this time after a 2–2 draw with Maryland went through two overtimes.

Michigan State's softball team won which national title in 1976?

Women's College World Series: the Spartans won all five games, six years before the NCAA ran softball. Their freshman shortstop, Carol Hutchins, later coached rival Michigan to the same title in 2005.

MSU has the world's first state-funded school in which medical field?

Osteopathic medicine: the college opened in 1969 as a private school in Pontiac and joined MSU a year later, after a petition to the legislature won it state funding.