BYU Trivia
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49 free BYU trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Brigham Young University opened as an academy in Provo in 1876 with a German immigrant as principal, banned football for nearly twenty years after a player died, and then spent the LaVell Edwards era turning itself into Quarterback U. Along the way it produced a Heisman winner, a national champion, a Jeopardy! host and the inventor of stereo sound. This BYU trivia covers the university and the Cougars in equal measure: the founding and honor code, Cosmo's $73 costume, the 1984 title run, the Holy War, the Marriott Center greats, and the alumni you did not know went to school in Provo. Every answer is sourced and explained.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01BYU's forerunner was a branch of the University of Deseret, now called what?
University of Utah
University of Utah. The Provo school was a branch of BYU's future archrival until 1875, when Brigham Young took over its building and made it a separate academy under his own name.
Q 02The NCAA had to plan a mid-tournament bracket switch in 2003 because BYU's teams will not do what?
Play on Sundays
Play on Sundays. The selection committee had mistakenly put BYU on course for a Sunday regional final, so it arranged to move the Cougars to another region if they won twice.
Q 03Whom did Brigham Young send to Provo in 1876 to run his new academy?
Karl Maeser
Karl Maeser. Young's charge to the German-born schoolteacher was not to teach even the alphabet or the multiplication tables without the Spirit of God.
Q 04When Brigham Young Academy was dissolved in 1903, it was replaced by BYU and what other institution?
Brigham Young High School
Brigham Young High School. It closed in 1968, and its old Academy building was later restored and reopened in 2001 as Provo's city library.
Q 05The university's founder, Brigham Young, was born in which state?
Vermont
Vermont. Born in Whitingham in 1801, he was a carpenter in upstate New York when he joined the church, and in 1847 he led its pioneers west to the Salt Lake Valley.
Q 06Most BYU students speak a second language, which many learned through what?
Church missions
Church missions. Many students serve one abroad and come back fluent, which is how BYU comes to teach more than 60 languages.
Q 07Which bestselling novelist earned an English degree from BYU in 1997?
Stephenie Meyer
Stephenie Meyer. Six years after graduating she woke from a vivid dream about a girl and a vampire in a meadow, sat down to write, and it became chapter 13 of Twilight.
Q 08BYU's parent Church Educational System sponsors sister schools in which two places?
Hawaii and Idaho
BYU itself also runs satellite campuses in Salt Lake City, Washington, D.C., London and the Middle East.
Q 09BYU's Middle East study center, closed in 2000 over security concerns, is in which city?
Jerusalem
It reopened to students in the Winter 2007 semester after the Second Intifada and the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict had kept it shut.
Q 10BYU's main campus sits at the base of which mountain range?
Wasatch Mountains
Wasatch Mountains. The white Y above campus was meant to read BYU, but after a day hauling lime up the slope in 1906 students had finished only the middle letter, and the rest was dropped.
Q 11Which politician transferred from Stanford and graduated from BYU in 1971?
Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney. Back from 30 months in France, he married Ann Davies in 1969 and followed her to BYU, where she had been a student since 1967.
Q 12BYU's building code CONE marks which campus spot?
The creamery
The creamery. CONE is short for Creamery on Ninth East, which grew out of a dairy lab opened in 1949 to supply the campus with milk.
Q 13BYU topped which Princeton Review ranking of colleges for at least 21 years in a row?
Stone Cold Sober
Stone Cold Sober. To mark year 21, the legal drinking age, BYU's campus dairy released a mint brownie chocolate milk named Stone Cold 21.
Q 21Which television pioneer studied at BYU in the 1920s but left without a degree?
Philo Farnsworth
Philo Farnsworth. He left after two years, yet at 21, working in a San Francisco lab, he produced the first all-electronic television image.
Q 22BYU's Harvey Fletcher, known as the father of stereo sound, ran the famous oil-drop experiment with whom?
Robert Millikan
Robert Millikan. He took sole credit for the experiment and the Nobel Prize that followed, and Fletcher, his graduate student, got a related paper for his dissertation instead.
Q 23Which science YouTuber earned a mechanical engineering degree from BYU in 2004?
Mark Rober
Q 14BYU's ballroom team was the first US team to win formation titles at which English resort?
Blackpool
Blackpool. BYU's dancers have gone back to the British Open there about every three years since the 1970s and have become frequent winners of its formation titles.
Q 15Who was unmasked as BYU's Cosmo the Cougar in 1960?
The school's president
The school's president. Ernest Wilkinson had put on the cougar suit to startle the student body, and he was revealed when the head came off.
Q 16Pep chairman Dwayne Stevenson bought the first Cosmo costume for how much?
$73
He then talked his roommate, Daniel T. Gallego, into being the first person to wear it.
Q 17BYU joined which conference in 2023, alongside Cincinnati, Houston and UCF?
Big 12
Big 12. The league invited the four schools in September 2021, weeks after Texas and Oklahoma agreed to leave it for the SEC.
Q 18Which BYU team competes in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, not the school's main conference?
Men's volleyball
Men's volleyball. BYU's main conference has no league for the men's game, so its three-time NCAA champions play in the MPSF.
Q 19Which Jeopardy! champion graduated from BYU in 2000?
Ken Jennings
Ken Jennings. He captained BYU's quiz bowl team and roomed with future fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson, four years before his 74-game winning streak.
Q 20BYU graduate Jon Heder ('02) is best known for playing which title character?
Napoleon Dynamite
Napoleon Dynamite. The film grew out of Peluca, a nine-minute short that Jared Hess shot for a BYU class assignment with Heder in the lead.
Mark Rober. He spent seven of his nine NASA years on the Curiosity rover, then built a glitter-spraying trap for package thieves that became a viral hit.
Q 24Which 7-foot-6 center played one season at BYU before going second overall in the 1993 NBA draft?
Shawn Bradley
Shawn Bradley. He hadn't played a game in two years when the 76ers took him, having left BYU after his freshman season to spend them in Sydney, Australia.
Q 25Football was banned at all LDS Church schools from 1900 for nearly two decades after what?
A player's accidental death
A player's accidental death. The ban held until 1919, and the school did not field an intercollegiate team again until 1922, the season BYU now counts as its first.
Q 26BYU's first football All-American, Eldon Fortie, was an elusive runner known by which nickname?
The Phantom
The Phantom. Long before BYU was known for its passers, its first All-American was a runner whose 272 rushing yards in one 1962 game stood as the school record for 54 years.
Q 27Which chart-topping rock band was started in 2008 by two BYU students?
Imagine Dragons
Imagine Dragons. Singer Dan Reynolds met drummer Andrew Tolman on campus and recruited him, and the band went on to make its name in Reynolds's hometown, Las Vegas.
Q 28BYU's home stadium is named after which head coach?
LaVell Edwards
LaVell Edwards. Cougar Stadium took his name at the last home game of his 29 seasons in 2000, when church president Gordon B. Hinckley unveiled the banner.
Q 29Which Super Bowl-winning head coach was once an offensive lineman at BYU?
Andy Reid
Andy Reid. As a player he wrote a column for Provo's Daily Herald, then stayed on in 1982 as a graduate assistant to the coach who won 257 games at BYU.
Q 30Which star NFL receiver transferred from Washington to play his final two college seasons at BYU?
Puka Nacua
Puka Nacua. He lasted until the fifth round of the 2023 draft, then broke the NFL rookie records for both catches and receiving yards with the Rams.