Indiana State University
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40 free Indiana State University trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Indiana State University has been part of Terre Haute since 1865, when the state legislature created a school there to staff Indiana's classrooms. Today it is a doctoral university of blue and white, sycamore leaves and a basketball history far bigger than its size suggests. These fun facts come as quiz questions. They cover the stories Sycamores fans and alumni trade: Larry Bird's unbeaten season, John Wooden's short stay on the bench, campus buildings with surprising past lives, homecoming traditions, and the graduates who went on to the Olympics, the NFL, Hollywood and the US Senate. The quiz is written for students, alumni, staff and anyone planning a tailgate, an orientation icebreaker or a Terre Haute trivia night. 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 01Larry Bird's unbeaten Indiana State team lost the 1979 NCAA final to Michigan State and which guard?
Magic Johnson
Magic Johnson's Spartans won 75–64, ending Indiana State's 33–0 run. The two stars carried their rivalry into the NBA through the 1980s.
Q 02In 1967, Indiana State's Memorial Stadium became the first outdoor stadium fitted with which surface?
AstroTurf
AstroTurf went down in Terre Haute as an old minor league ballpark was rebuilt for football. Indiana State became the first university in the world to own an outdoor artificial field.
Q 03John Wooden coached Indiana State for two seasons before winning ten national titles at which school?
UCLA
UCLA hired Wooden away in 1948, and he won his ten NCAA championships there in a 12-year span. Indiana State later named its home floor the Nellie and John Wooden Court.
Q 04David Letterman's alma mater opened in 1918 as Indiana State's eastern division in which Indiana city?
Muncie
Muncie got its campus when the Ball brothers bought a foreclosed school and gave it to the state. Terre Haute's trustees governed it for decades before Ball State became independent in 1961.
Q 05A picture in what is now Indiana State's Fairbanks Hall inspired which soft drink's 1915 bottle?
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola's contour bottle began as Earl R. Dean's pencil sketch of a cocoa pod. He worked for Terre Haute's Root Glass Company, and the hall was then the Emeline Fairbanks Memorial Library.
Q 06Which singer, the voice of Sam the Snowman in a 1964 Rudolph special, took classes at Indiana State?
Burl Ives
Burl Ives was performing on Terre Haute radio station WBOW around 1931 when he went back to school. He later won an Academy Award for his role in The Big Country.
Q 07Indiana State's basketball arena is named for a local family that bought which racetrack in 1945?
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Indianapolis Motor Speedway was bought by Tony Hulman, who revived racing there after a four-year wartime break. His $2.5 million challenge gift later launched the campus arena.
Q 08Which NBA team drafted Larry Bird in 1978, a year before he finished playing for Indiana State?
Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics management picked Bird sixth overall, then waited while he played his senior season. The NBA later changed its rules to stop teams drafting players before they were ready to sign.
Q 09Since 1963, Indiana State's homecoming week has featured a derby in which student teams race on what?
Tricycles
Tricycles built for children carried the first racers ten laps around the Quad. The derby grew so popular that students switched in 1967 to larger machines made from Sting-Ray bike frames.
Q 10The preserved home of which union leader and presidential candidate stands on Indiana State's campus?
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs built the house with his wife Kate in 1890. It served as the Theta Chi fraternity house from 1948 to 1961 and is now a museum and a National Historic Landmark.
Q 11Before enrolling at Indiana State, Larry Bird left which coach's Indiana Hoosiers after less than a month?
Bob Knight
Bob Knight's Bloomington campus overwhelmed the small-town freshman, who went home and worked municipal jobs for a year. Bird enrolled in Terre Haute in 1975.
Q 12Kurt Thomas, who led Indiana State to a 1977 NCAA team title, was a world champion in which sport?
Gymnastics
Gymnastics had never produced an American men's world champion until Thomas won gold in 1978. He also collected five individual NCAA titles for the Sycamores.
Q 13Indiana State graduate Bruce Baumgartner won Olympic gold medals in 1984 and 1992 in which sport?
Wrestling
Q 21Indiana State alumnus Alvy Moore, a Marine veteran of Iwo Jima, played county agent Hank Kimball on which sitcom?
Green Acres
Green Acres featured Moore's scatterbrained county agent in 142 of its 170 episodes. He was so proud of the part that he drove a white Chrysler with the license plate GRNACRS.
Q 22Indiana State's only NCAA basketball final, in 1979, was played on the campus of which western university?
Utah
Utah staged the game at its Special Events Center in Salt Lake City, now the Jon M. Huntsman Center. The Sycamores lost 75–64, their only defeat in 34 games that season.
Q 23John Wooden's Indiana State team declined a 1947 national tournament bid because the event barred which group?
Black players
Wrestling brought Baumgartner four Olympic medals at four Games, two of them gold. He won an NCAA title for the Sycamores and later became president of the sport's national governing body.
Q 14Terre Haute, home of Indiana State University, takes its name from words for highland in which language?
French
French-Canadian explorers and fur trappers named the high ground above the Wabash River in the early 18th century. The bluffs were then treated as the border between Canada and Louisiana.
Q 15Indiana State was the first public university in Indiana to require every incoming freshman to have what?
A laptop
A laptop became compulsory for new students, and scholarships backed the rule. Freshmen with strong high school grades could choose a free notebook computer or an iPad.
Q 16Indiana State's Sycamore Outdoor Center, with eight lakes, lies near an Indiana town named after which country?
Brazil
Brazil, Indiana, is home to the 80-acre center, about 18 miles east of Terre Haute. Its eight lakes are fed by an underground water supply.
Q 17Before a 1921 contest made Indiana State's teams the Sycamores, press accounts gave the athletes which nickname?
Fighting Teachers
Fighting Teachers suited a school founded to train educators. Sycamores won the student vote, though it is believed many backed the name on a lark and never expected it to win.
Q 18Until Indiana State adopted blue and white in 1899, white was paired with which other school color?
Salmon pink
Salmon pink and white gave way to Yale blue and white in 1899. The newer pair still gives its name to the homecoming parade each fall.
Q 19Which future Super Bowl-winning NFL head coach was an Indiana State football assistant in 1990 and 1991?
Sean Payton
Sean Payton coached under Dennis Raetz in Terre Haute and met his future wife, an Indiana State graduate, there. He later led the New Orleans Saints to their first championship.
Q 20Indiana State lineman Tunch Ilkin, later a two-time Pro Bowler for the Steelers, was born in which country?
Turkey
Turkey was Ilkin's home until his parents moved from Istanbul to the Chicago area when he was two. He became the first Turk to play in the NFL.
Black players were banned by the NAIB, and Wooden's roster included Clarence Walker. The ban was lifted a year later, and Walker played as Indiana State reached the 1948 final.
Q 24After a 1950 national title, Indiana State players formed the core of the US team at which inaugural event?
Pan American Games
Pan American Games basketball debuted in Buenos Aires in 1951, and coach John Longfellow took a group of his Sycamores to represent the United States. They came home with the gold medal.
Q 25The University of Southern Indiana began in 1965 as a regional campus of Indiana State in which city?
Evansville
Evansville's campus spent two decades as a branch of the Terre Haute school. It became autonomous in 1985, when Governor Robert D. Orr, who grew up in the city, signed its charter.
Q 26Federal Hall, home of Indiana State's business college, was built in the 1930s as a courthouse and what?
Post office
Post office counters shared the building with a federal court, the FBI and the IRS. The old courtroom features a Frederick Webb Ross mural of the signing of Magna Carta.
Q 27Indiana State's LaVern Gibson cross country course, a regular NCAA host, was built on a reclaimed what?
Coal mine
Coal mine land near Terre Haute became one of the few purpose-built cross country courses in the world. It has hosted the NCAA Division I championships more than a dozen times.
Q 28Indiana State's alma mater is set to Annie Lisle, a tune first borrowed, it is believed, by which Ivy League school?
Cornell
Cornell is thought to have been first to turn the 1857 ballad into a school song, and dozens of colleges followed. English professor Charles M. Curry wrote Indiana State's words, first printed in 1912.
Q 29Indiana State joined which conference for 1977–78, a league Larry Bird's team swept 16–0 the next season?
Missouri Valley
Missouri Valley, also known as The Valley, is the fourth-oldest college athletic conference in the United States. Its men's basketball Player of the Year trophy is named in Bird's honor.
Q 30In 2013, a company began drilling on Indiana State's campus, the first such downtown well since 1903, for what?
Oil
Oil was the target when an Illinois company set up at 10th and Chestnut Streets in December 2013. Nobody had drilled for it in downtown Terre Haute for 110 years.