Eastern Kentucky University
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40 free Eastern Kentucky University trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Eastern Kentucky University has been part of Richmond since 1906, when the state took over the campus of a shuttered private college and opened a new public institution there. More than a century later, EKU is a regional university with a proud football tradition, long-standing strengths in fields like law enforcement and nursing, and a campus full of landmarks with stories behind them. This quiz covers the history EKU fans search for: the founding years and early presidents, the names on the buildings, the rivalries and title-winning seasons of Colonels athletics, and the graduates who went on to Hollywood, network television, the major leagues, the Olympics and even a prime minister's office. A few questions step off campus into Richmond and the surrounding Bluegrass. It is written for students, alumni, staff and anyone planning a homecoming tailgate or an orientation icebreaker. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few stories worth retelling.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A 1985 smuggling flight by EKU law enforcement graduate Andrew Thornton inspired which 2023 film?
Cocaine Bear
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.
Q 02Which 1962 EKU graduate starred in the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man and The Fall Guy?
Lee Majors
Lee Majors came to Eastern as a football player, but a severe back injury ended his athletic career and turned him toward acting.
Q 03EKU criminal justice graduate Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister of which country in 2001?
Thailand
Thailand elected the former police officer in 2001, and after he was overthrown in 2006 he bought the English football club Manchester City.
Q 04Which SportsCenter anchor attended EKU on a basketball scholarship before transferring to Dayton?
Dan Patrick
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.
Q 05Eastern Kentucky alumnus Earle Combs batted leadoff for which baseball team's fabled 1927 lineup?
New York Yankees
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.
Q 06A statue of which frontiersman, cast in 1967 from an Enid Yandell sculpture, stands on EKU's campus?
Daniel Boone
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.
Q 07Which coach won 314 games and two national titles leading Eastern Kentucky football from 1964 to 2002?
Roy Kidd
Roy Kidd turned down a football scholarship from the University of Kentucky because Eastern's coaches would let him play baseball too.
Q 08Which longtime Good Morning America weather anchor earned a broadcast news degree at EKU?
Sam Champion
Sam Champion, a Paducah native, left ABC in 2013 to become managing editor of The Weather Channel before later returning to the network.
Q 09Which nickname did EKU teams use from 1909 until they became the Colonels in 1963?
Maroons
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.
Q 10Former EKU art student Laura Kirkpatrick finished runner-up in 2009 on which reality competition?
America's Next Top Model
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.
Q 11EKU's football rivalry with which school, first played in 1914, is known as the Battle of the Bluegrass?
Western Kentucky
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.
Q 12EKU opened in 1906 as a state normal school, an institution created to train which professionals?
Teachers
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.
Q 13EKU basketball coach Paul McBrayer spent nine seasons as an assistant to which college coaching great?
Adolph Rupp
Q 21The Old Hawg Rifle was the trophy in EKU's football rivalry with which fellow Kentucky public university?
Morehead State
Morehead State has kept the rifle on display in its student center, though the two teams stopped playing for it after 1962.
Q 22EKU was a founding member in 1948 of which athletic conference, where the Colonels stayed for 73 years?
Ohio Valley
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.
Q 23EKU's baseball field honors former coach Charles Hughes, who was known by which bird nickname?
Turkey
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.
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.
Q 14EKU's radio station WEKU, on the air since 1968, is a charter member of which broadcasting network?
NPR
NPR counts WEKU among its founding member stations, and the signal now covers northern, central and eastern Kentucky with news and talk.
Q 15Richmond, home of Eastern Kentucky University, is the seat of which county, named for a future US president?
Madison
Madison County took James Madison's name in 1785, long before his presidency, and it is also home to Berea College.
Q 16EKU's campus once belonged to Central University, which merged in 1901 with which Danville school?
Centre College
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.
Q 17The clock tower that is EKU's best-known landmark tops a building named for which Kentucky governor?
Keen Johnson
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.
Q 18Which widow of Eastern Kentucky's first president signed diplomas for the first graduating class in 1909?
Mary Roark
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.
Q 19EKU's Richmond campus lies about 25 miles south, along I-75, of which city, the second largest in Kentucky?
Lexington
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.
Q 20EKU football capped a perfect 13–0 season in 1982 by beating which school 17–14 for the national title?
Delaware
Delaware fell in the Pioneer Bowl at Wichita Falls, Texas, making the Colonels the first program to win two I-AA crowns.
Q 24EKU graduate Homer Ledford, whose work is in the Smithsonian, built thousands of which folk instrument?
Dulcimers
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.
Q 25Which novelist, an EKU English graduate, wrote Clay's Quilt and A Parchment of Leaves?
Silas House
Silas House set his first three novels in a fictional Crow County, based on the mountain county where he spent much of his childhood.
Q 26Sprinter and EKU graduate Dallas Robinson competed at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in which sport?
Bobsled
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.
Q 27EKU opened a campus in 2004 in which Kentucky city, home of the café where Kentucky Fried Chicken began?
Corbin
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.
Q 28EKU alumnus Steve Smith won 1,231 games and nine national titles coaching basketball at which prep school?
Oak Hill Academy
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.
Q 29EKU graduate Eula Bingham ran which federal agency under Jimmy Carter, scrapping over 1,000 petty rules?
OSHA
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.
Q 30Yeremiah Bell left a steel mill job to walk on at EKU, then made the Pro Bowl with which NFL team?
Miami Dolphins
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.