MSU Trivia: Michigan State University
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59 free MSU Trivia: Michigan State University trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
MSU here means Michigan State University: the Spartans, Sparty, Beaumont Tower and the sprawling campus next door to the state capital. This quiz covers the whole school, not just game day. You will get football and basketball history (the Game of the Century, the 1979 and 2000 titles, the Paul Bunyan Trophy), but also the science that happened in its labs, the buildings every student walks past, and the alumni who went on to Hollywood, the NBA and the Senate. The questions range from things any Spartan knows (school colours, the campus river, the mascot) to the kind of detail that separates a real fan from a visitor: which name the teams almost got instead of Spartans, why the original Spartan statue was made of terra cotta, and what MSU's longest-serving president chaired in Washington. It suits tailgates, alumni nights, campus tours and anyone settling an argument with a Wolverine. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the university, its teams, buildings and people, and each question links to the source, so you can verify anything that surprises you.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which subjects did Michigan State's first curriculum leave out?
Latin and Greek
Latin and Greek. Dropping the classical languages opened the college to farm boys who had never studied them, and every student did three hours of manual work a day instead to help pay his way.
Q 02What do Michigan State students famously do to 'The Rock', a boulder on campus?
Repaint it constantly
Repaint it constantly. Student groups cover the class of 1873's boulder with a new message almost every night, and the paint is now so thick that fallen slabs of it have been cut into 'Spartan Agate' jewellery.
Q 03Michigan State's main campus is in which city?
East Lansing
East Lansing. The college came first: the town that grew up around it only became a city, under its present name, in 1907, half a century after classes began.
Q 04The MSU campus is built along the banks of which waterway?
Red Cedar River
Red Cedar River. The fight song opens on its banks, and it splits the campus in two because a 1926 plan kept classrooms north of the water and sent the farms and sports grounds south.
Q 05Michigan State became a land-grant college in 1863 under which federal law, passed the year before?
Morrill Act
Morrill Act. The law copied the college rather than the other way round: Michigan State, already eight years old, is regarded as the prototype for the land-grant schools it created.
Q 06Until 1959, which body governed Michigan State University?
State Board of Agriculture
State Board of Agriculture stayed the governing body's name long after farming stopped being the only subject. Voters renamed it the Board of Trustees in 1959, five years before the university dropped 'Agriculture' from its own name.
Q 07MSU's contiguous campus covers roughly how many acres?
5,200
5,200 acres makes it one of the biggest campuses in the country, yet fewer than half of those acres are built on: only about 2,000 count as developed.
Q 08What are Michigan State's official colours?
Green and white
Green and white are 'the only colors' the fight song tells Spartans to fight for; a student cheerleader, Francis Irving Lankey, composed it in 1915, when the school was still Michigan Agricultural College.
Q 09In 2004 Sparty became the first Big Ten mascot to win what?
The UCA national championship for mascots
The UCA national championship for mascots is judged on a video and a live skit. Sparty defended it in 2005, beating Minnesota's Goldy Gopher and Wisconsin's Bucky Badger, and won again in 2007.
Q 10Why was the original 'Spartan' campus statue cast in terra cotta instead of metal?
Wartime rationing of bronze
Wartime rationing of bronze is the usual account, and MSU's archives call the metal shortage the most likely reason. The result is thought to be the world's tallest free-standing ceramic statue; a bronze copy replaced it outdoors in 2005.
Q 11Which Spartan defensive end, later a film actor, was the first pick of the 1967 NFL draft?
Bubba Smith
Bubba Smith had Spartan Stadium crowds chanting 'Kill, Bubba, Kill'. He later played Hightower in the Police Academy films.
Q 12Sportswriter George S. Alderton chose "Spartans" as the team name in the 1920s instead of what alternative?
Michigan Staters
Michigan Staters won a contest to replace 'Aggies', but Alderton found it too clumsy for newspaper copy. He picked 'Spartans' from the losing entries and slipped it into his reports from a 1926 baseball tour.
Q 13In 1953, its first season of Big Ten football, Michigan State went to the Rose Bowl and beat which team?
UCLA
Q 21Michigan State's 20–17 win in the 1988 Rose Bowl under George Perles came against which team?
USC
USC had already lost to the Spartans once that season, 27-13 in the opener, so the Rose Bowl was a rematch; linebacker Percy Snow was named the game's outstanding player.
Q 22Which coach holds the Michigan State football record for most wins, with 114?
Mark Dantonio
Mark Dantonio broke a record that had stood since 1972 when he won his 110th game in September 2019, then retired the following February with 114 wins and three Big Ten titles.
Q 23After the 1999 regular season, Nick Saban abruptly left Michigan State to run which program?
LSU
LSU hired him before the bowl game, so an assistant coached the Citrus Bowl and beat Florida 37-34. Saban himself had gone 0-3 in bowls with the Spartans.
UCLA scored the first 14 points, but a blocked punt returned for a touchdown turned the game and the Spartans won 28-20.
Q 14Which Michigan governor donated the trophy that Michigan State and Michigan have played football for since 1953?
G. Mennen Williams
G. Mennen Williams gave it to mark the Spartans' first Big Ten meeting with their rival, which they won 14-6. Michigan cared so little that after winning it in 1954 the team left it on the field for half an hour.
Q 15What do Michigan State and Michigan play for in their annual football game?
Paul Bunyan Trophy
Paul Bunyan Trophy: a four-foot wooden lumberjack on a five-foot base. Michigan cared so little for it that its 1954 and 1955 wins went unengraved until the Spartans won it back in 1956 and added them.
Q 16The Land Grant Trophy, first contested in 1993, goes to the winner of the Spartans' game against which school?
Penn State
Coaches George Perles and Joe Paterno designed it themselves, which may explain why it is routinely called the ugliest trophy in college football.
Q 17Michigan State and Notre Dame play football for which prize, introduced in 1949?
Megaphone Trophy
Megaphone Trophy: its most famous year produced no new winner, because the 1966 'Game of the Century' between the two schools ended level.
Q 18The 1966 'Game of the Century' between Michigan State and Notre Dame ended in what score?
10–10
10–10 it stayed: with the ball on its own 30 and about a minute and a half left, Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian ran out the clock rather than risk a turnover, a choice he was criticised for and kept having to defend.
Q 19Who coached four of Michigan State's six claimed football national titles?
Duffy Daugherty
Duffy Daugherty's teams earned the claims for 1955, 1957, 1965 and 1966. His 1966 squad was so loaded that it supplied four of the first eight picks in the next NFL draft.
Q 20Which coach won Michigan State's first football national titles, in 1951 and 1952, then became its athletic director?
Biggie Munn
Biggie Munn quit coaching at the top: straight after winning the Rose Bowl in his first Big Ten season he moved up to athletic director, a job he kept until 1971.
Q 24When Spartan Stadium opened in 1923, what was it called?
College Field
It became Macklin Field in 1935 and Macklin Stadium in 1948 before taking its current name in 1957.
Q 25The 1979 NCAA final, the highest-rated basketball telecast on record, pitted the Spartans against which Indiana State star?
Larry Bird
Larry Bird's Sycamores arrived 33-0 and ranked first, but the Spartans beat them 75-64. The broadcast drew a 24.1 rating, the highest on record for a basketball game.
Q 26Which sophomore point guard led Michigan State to the 1979 NCAA basketball title?
Magic Johnson
Magic Johnson was the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player and went first in that summer's NBA draft. He had been 'Magic' since he was 15, when a sportswriter watched him post a triple-double for Everett High.
Q 27Who was named Most Outstanding Player when Michigan State beat Florida for the 2000 NCAA title?
Mateen Cleaves
Mateen Cleaves sprained an ankle with just over 16 minutes left, limped to the locker room in tears, then came back and led the run that settled the 89–76 win.
Q 28Tom Izzo became Michigan State's head basketball coach in 1995, succeeding whom?
Jud Heathcote
Jud Heathcote, coach of the 1979 champions, took Izzo on as a part-time assistant in 1983 and recommended him for the job when he retired after 19 seasons.
Q 29Tom Izzo grew up in Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula alongside which future NFL head coach?
Steve Mariucci
Steve Mariucci and Izzo were born in Iron Mountain in the same year and both went on to Northern Michigan University, where Mariucci played quarterback and Izzo had to walk on to the basketball team.
Q 30In June 2010 Tom Izzo turned down an offer to coach which NBA team?
Cleveland Cavaliers
Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, an MSU graduate, made the offer. Saying he was staying 'for life', Izzo added that he hoped a certain 6-8 forward in Cleveland would stay home too; LeBron James left weeks later.