College Wrestling
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50 free College Wrestling trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
College wrestling packs a whole season into three days every March, when the NCAA Championships crown ten individual champions and one team. It is a sport of unbeaten careers and one-point finals, with rules and a scoring system found nowhere else in the world. This quiz covers the legends and dynasties of the NCAA tournament, the way matches are scored and won, famous upsets, and the newest champions and rule changes. It also follows the wrestlers who left the mat for Olympic podiums, pro football, WWE rings and the UFC cage, plus a few surprising names from Hollywood, literature and politics who wrestled in college. The questions suit lifelong fans and newcomers alike: some reward anyone who has watched a dual meet, and others will test people who never miss the March finals. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which wrestler finished his college career a perfect 159–0, winning four NCAA titles from 1999 to 2002?
Cael Sanderson
Cael Sanderson is the only four-time NCAA Division I champion to finish his career unbeaten, and he followed it with an Olympic gold medal in Athens in 2004.
Q 02Which wrestler lost his only college match in the 1970 NCAA final, then coached Iowa to 15 national titles?
Dan Gable
Dan Gable went 117–1 in college, beaten only by Washington's Larry Owings, and his teams later won nine straight NCAA titles from 1978 to 1986.
Q 03Which university has won the most NCAA Division I wrestling team titles, with more than 30 since 1928?
Oklahoma State
Oklahoma State won its first eleven NCAA team titles under coach Ed Gallagher, beginning with the very first tournament in 1928.
Q 04Which annual award for America's best college wrestler is known as wrestling's answer to the Heisman?
Dan Hodge Trophy
The Dan Hodge Trophy was first presented in 1995 and is named for a three-time NCAA champion of the 1950s.
Q 05Which Arizona State wrestler, born with one leg, won the 2011 NCAA title at 125 pounds?
Anthony Robles
Anthony Robles refused to wear a prosthetic leg from the age of three and wrestled his whole career without one.
Q 06Which future WWE star won two NCAA heavyweight titles at Clarion before taking Olympic gold in 1996?
Kurt Angle
Kurt Angle won his Olympic gold medal in Atlanta despite fracturing two vertebrae in his neck at the trials, then joined WWE in 1998.
Q 07Which future WWE and UFC champion won the 2000 NCAA heavyweight title for the University of Minnesota?
Brock Lesnar
Brock Lesnar had been the NCAA runner-up in 1999, after transferring to Minnesota from Bismarck State College in North Dakota.
Q 08Which 2014 film stars Channing Tatum as Olympic and NCAA champion wrestler Mark Schultz?
Foxcatcher
Foxcatcher traces millionaire John du Pont's recruitment of Mark and his brother Dave, played by Mark Ruffalo, to train on his estate.
Q 09Which name is commonly used for U.S. college wrestling, as distinct from Olympic freestyle and Greco-Roman?
Folkstyle
Folkstyle rewards control over an opponent on the mat, while the international styles encourage explosive action and risk.
Q 10Which score did the NCAA raise from two points to three starting with the 2023–24 college wrestling season?
Takedown
Takedown scoring went up by a point to reward offensive wrestling and risk-taking, and the old hand-touch version of the move was scrapped at the same time.
Q 11Which Cornell wrestler is the only one to win four NCAA titles in four different weight classes?
Kyle Dake
Kyle Dake moved up a weight every year, winning at 141, 149, 157 and 165 pounds from 2010 to 2013.
Q 12Which Penn State wrestler became the first five-time NCAA Division I champion in 2025?
Carter Starocci
Carter Starocci had a fifth season because athletes who competed in the COVID-affected 2020–21 year were given an extra year of eligibility.
Q 13Which Hollywood star of the 1950s wrestled at St. Lawrence University and once grappled in a carnival for money?
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas could not afford tuition, so he talked his way into the dean's office at St. Lawrence and became a standout on its wrestling team.
Q 21Who became the first four-time NCAA Division I wrestling champion by winning a final title in 1994?
Pat Smith
Pat Smith won his titles in 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1994, and his older brother John was a two-time Olympic gold medalist.
Q 22Which Iowa wrestler won his third NCAA title in 2021 despite having torn ACLs in both knees?
Spencer Lee
Spencer Lee revealed afterward that he had torn his left ACL eight days before the tournament, matching a right-knee tear from the 2019 finals.
Q 23Which Air Force second lieutenant stunned an Olympic champion to win the 2025 NCAA heavyweight title?
Wyatt Hendrickson
Wyatt Hendrickson scored in the final seconds to end the 70-match winning streak of Minnesota's Tokyo gold medalist.
Q 14Which celebrated novelist was a champion wrestler at the University of Oregon in the 1950s?
Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey went to Oregon on a football scholarship, switched to the wrestling team as a better fit for his build, and later wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Q 15Which result ends a college wrestling match the moment one wrestler builds a 15-point lead?
Technical fall
Technical fall usually comes when one wrestler has such control that he scores near-fall points again and again.
Q 16Which bonus point goes to a college wrestler who controls an opponent on the mat for a minute longer?
Riding time
Riding time has been clocked by college officials since 1915, though today it is worth no more than a single point at the end of a match.
Q 17Which honor does a wrestler earn by finishing in the top eight of a weight class at the NCAA Championships?
All-American
All-American status goes to eight wrestlers in each of the ten weight classes, so a wrestler can earn it without ever reaching a final.
Q 18Which Nebraska wrestler won NCAA titles in 2009 and 2011 before taking Olympic gold in London?
Jordan Burroughs
Jordan Burroughs beat Iran's Sadegh Goudarzi in the 2012 Olympic final, a year after winning his first freestyle world title in Istanbul.
Q 19Which Nebraska heavyweight placed fourth at the 1993 NCAA Championships, then beat Aleksandr Karelin for Olympic gold?
Rulon Gardner
Rulon Gardner ended Karelin's 13-year unbeaten run in international competition when he won the Greco-Roman final at the 2000 Sydney Games.
Q 20Which Big Ten football venue hosted the 2015 Grapple on the Gridiron, a college wrestling dual that drew 42,287 fans?
Kinnick Stadium
Kinnick Stadium is normally the home of Iowa football, and the record crowd watched the dual meet outdoors there on November 14, 2015.
Q 24Which Olympic champion nicknamed the Magic Man became a college head coach in 2024 after two NCAA titles at Penn State?
David Taylor
David Taylor reached four NCAA finals, won Olympic gold in Tokyo, and took his first head coaching job at the age of 33.
Q 25Which Ohio State heavyweight became the first Olympic champion to return to college and win an NCAA title, in 2017?
Kyle Snyder
Kyle Snyder won that 2017 title despite tearing cartilage in his chest in the quarterfinals and giving away as much as 40 pounds to opponents.
Q 26Which two-time NCAA champion from Cal State Bakersfield won three Super Bowl rings without playing college football?
Stephen Neal
Stephen Neal was also a freestyle world champion, and the New England Patriots signed him as an undrafted free agent in 2001.
Q 27Which future UFC champion lost the 2001 NCAA final at 184 pounds after two junior college titles at Colby?
Daniel Cormier
Daniel Cormier lost that final 8–4, was later named captain of the 2008 U.S. Olympic wrestling team, and went on to hold UFC titles at two weights at once.
Q 28Which future Nobel Peace Prize winner wrestled for the University of Minnesota and reached the Big Ten semifinals?
Norman Borlaug
Norman Borlaug, the plant scientist behind the Green Revolution, is in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame for his contributions to the sport.
Q 29Which college town has housed the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum since it opened in 1976?
Stillwater
Stillwater was awarded the museum in 1972, when the United States Wrestling Federation chose it over a competing bid from Waterloo, Iowa.
Q 30Which Ivy League university faced Columbia in 1903 in the first intercollegiate wrestling dual meet?
Yale
Yale and Columbia met a quarter of a century before the NCAA staged its first wrestling championships in 1928.