College Football Trivia 2023
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58 free College Football Trivia 2023 trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
College football trivia 2023 covers one of the wildest seasons in memory. Michigan went 15–0 and won the national title while its head coach served two separate suspensions, Florida State became the first undefeated Power Five champion ever left out of the playoff, and Deion Sanders turned a 1–11 Colorado team into the biggest story in the sport for a month before finishing 4–8. The questions run from the January 2023 title game (Georgia 65, TCU 7) through the 2024 Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl and championship game in Houston. Along the way you will find Jayden Daniels' Heisman, Texas walking into Tuscaloosa and winning, Alabama's fourth-and-31 miracle at Auburn, the last-ever Pac-12 championship game, Jimbo Fisher's $77.5 million buyout, and the winter that saw Nick Saban retire and Jim Harbaugh bolt for the Chargers. Every answer is checked against the record for that game or season, so scores, dates and names are exact. Around a third of the questions are easy enough for a casual Saturday fan; the rest reward the people who watched the 11 a.m. kickoffs too.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which quarterback led Michigan to the 2023 national title before the Minnesota Vikings drafted him 10th overall?
J.J. McCarthy
J.J. McCarthy threw for just 140 yards in the title game, a modest night by his standards, yet the win took his record as Michigan's starter to 27–1.
Q 02Which Michigan player opened the 2024 title game with two long touchdown runs?
Donovan Edwards
Donovan Edwards had scored only three touchdowns in 14 games that season, then broke runs of 41 and 46 yards in the first quarter of the final.
Q 03The 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship was played at which venue?
NRG Stadium, Houston
NRG Stadium, Houston hosted the last final of the four-team playoff. It doubled as a preview of a league fixture: Washington joined Michigan's Big Ten the following season.
Q 04Who was offensive MVP of the 2024 national championship game with two fourth-quarter scores?
Blake Corum
Blake Corum had missed the previous season's playoff with a knee injury, then came back for a senior year and ran for 134 yards in the final.
Q 05With a win over Maryland in November 2023, Michigan became the first college program to reach how many wins?
1,000
1,000. Michigan, which first played in 1879, got there with a 31–24 win while its suspended head coach was absent from the stadium.
Q 06Who won the 2023 Heisman Trophy?
Jayden Daniels
Jayden Daniels won even though his team finished the regular season 9–3 and missed the playoff: he led the nation in total offense and accounted for 50 touchdowns.
Q 07The 2023 Heisman Trophy winner spent his final two college seasons at which SEC school?
LSU
LSU. Like Joe Burrow, the Tigers' 2019 winner, he arrived as a transfer: he had started for three seasons in the Pac-12 before moving to Baton Rouge in 2022.
Q 08Which quarterback finished second in the 2023 Heisman Trophy voting?
Michael Penix Jr.
Michael Penix Jr. had all four of his seasons at Indiana ended by injury, two of them by ACL tears, before he moved to Washington and finished his sixth college season in the national title game.
Q 09Where did Oregon's Bo Nix play his first three college seasons?
Auburn
Auburn. Nix never completed more than 61% of his passes in a season there, then set the NCAA record at 77.4% with Oregon in 2023.
Q 10Which receiver won the 2023 Fred Biletnikoff Award?
Marvin Harrison Jr.
Marvin Harrison Jr. then skipped the workouts at both the NFL combine and Ohio State's pro day to train for the season instead, and the Arizona Cardinals still drafted him fourth overall.
Q 11Which undefeated Power Five champion was left out of the 2023 four-team College Football Playoff?
Florida State
Florida State went 13–0 and won the ACC, but the committee ranked it fifth behind one-loss Alabama, calling it "a different team" without injured quarterback Jordan Travis.
Q 12Against which opponent did FSU quarterback Jordan Travis suffer his career-ending injury in November 2023?
North Alabama
North Alabama. Travis was carted off with his left leg in an air cast after a first-quarter run, and the injury forced him to retire in 2025 without ever playing an NFL down.
Q 13The 63–3 scoreline in the 2023 Orange Bowl set which bowl-game record?
Largest margin of victory
Q 21Jim Harbaugh's three-game Big Ten suspension in 2023 began with Michigan's road game at which school?
Penn State
Penn State. With Harbaugh kept away from the stadium, Michigan ran the ball on 32 straight plays and won 24–15 without an official pass attempt in the second half.
Q 22Which Michigan staffer was at the centre of the 2023 sign-stealing scandal?
Connor Stalions
Connor Stalions bought tickets so a network he called the "KGB" could film future opponents' sideline signals; the NCAA found it had scouted 13 opponents across 52 games.
Q 23Jim Harbaugh left Michigan weeks after the 2023 title to coach which NFL team?
Los Angeles Chargers
Largest margin of victory: the 60-point gap beat the 58 from the previous season's national title game. The losing Seminoles were without more than two dozen players through opt-outs and transfers.
Q 14Alabama's 27–24 win in the 2023 SEC Championship Game ended which team's 29-game winning streak?
Georgia
Georgia. The two-time defending champion went into the game ranked No. 1, and the loss made it the first top-ranked team in the penultimate rankings to fall out of the playoff field.
Q 15What did Isaiah Bond call his fourth-and-31 catch that won the 2023 Iron Bowl?
Gravedigger
Gravedigger. Alabama had first-and-goal at the 7 and went backwards to the 31 before Jalen Milroe found Bond with 32 seconds left, in what proved Nick Saban's last Iron Bowl.
Q 16Which team handed Alabama its only regular-season loss of 2023, winning 34–24 in Tuscaloosa in September?
Texas
Texas trailed 16–13 entering the fourth quarter, then scored three touchdowns in under six minutes in front of 100,000 at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Q 17Which quarterback threw for 452 yards and four touchdowns in the 2023 Big 12 Championship Game?
Quinn Ewers
Quinn Ewers threw one of his four touchdown passes to 362-pound defensive tackle T'Vondre Sweat as the Longhorns won 49–21 in their final Big 12 season before joining the SEC.
Q 18Michigan won the 2023 Big Ten Championship Game 26–0 over which team?
Iowa
Iowa. The shutout left the Big Ten West 0–10 in title games against the East, and the league dropped its divisions the next season, when it grew to 18 teams.
Q 19The 2023 Iowa Hawkeyes became infamous for which lopsided combination?
Great defense, historically bad offense
Great defense, historically bad offense: Iowa ranked 133rd of 133 FBS teams in total offense, and coordinator Brian Ferentz, the head coach's son, was told in October he would not be kept on.
Q 20Who was Michigan's acting head coach for the November 2023 win over Ohio State?
Sherrone Moore
Sherrone Moore, the offensive coordinator, was filling in during Jim Harbaugh's Big Ten suspension; two months later he succeeded Harbaugh as head coach.
Los Angeles Chargers. Harbaugh had quarterbacked the franchise in 1999 and 2000, when it played in San Diego, and rejoined it 16 days after winning the national title.
Q 24How was Michigan's 27–20 win over Alabama in the 2024 Rose Bowl semifinal decided?
A fourth-down stop in overtime
A fourth-down stop in overtime: Roman Wilson's touchdown catch with 1:34 left forced only the second overtime in Rose Bowl history, and Jalen Milroe was then stopped short on fourth-and-goal.
Q 25After retiring as Alabama's coach in January 2024, Nick Saban joined which TV show as an analyst?
College GameDay
College GameDay. Saban retired with seven national titles, six of them at Alabama, and within a month had signed on with ESPN's travelling pregame show.
Q 26Who did Alabama hire to replace Nick Saban in January 2024?
Kalen DeBoer
Kalen DeBoer was hired 49 hours after Saban retired. He had begun his head-coaching career in the NAIA, where he won three national titles at Sioux Falls.
Q 27Which 2023 bowl game ended with the winning team eating the sponsor's mascot?
Pop-Tarts Bowl
Pop-Tarts Bowl. After Kansas State beat NC State 28–19, a mascot named Strawberry was lowered into a giant replica toaster and an edible look-alike came out for the players.
Q 28Which receiver's 23-yard run on fourth-and-1 set up Washington's last-play win in the 2023 Apple Cup?
Rome Odunze
Rome Odunze. His run came from Washington's own 29 with the score tied, and it set up Grady Gross's 42-yard kick; the walk-on was handed a scholarship in the locker room afterwards.
Q 29The 2023 Pac-12 Championship Game, the last before ten schools left the league, was played in which city?
Las Vegas
Las Vegas. Washington beat Oregon 34–31 at Allegiant Stadium, its second three-point win over the Ducks that season, before both schools left for the Big Ten.
Q 30Which two schools were left behind when the Pac-12 collapsed in 2023?
Oregon State and Washington State
Oregon State and Washington State carried on as a two-team league through 2025, then relaunched the Pac-12 in 2026 with new members including Boise State and Gonzaga.