Notre Dame Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
49 free Notre Dame trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free Notre Dame trivia questions with answers. 'Notre Dame' means two things to most people, so this quiz covers both. The bulk of it is the University of Notre Dame and its Fighting Irish: Father Sorin's founding in 1842, the Golden Dome and the Grotto, Touchdown Jesus, the origin of the nickname, Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen, the Gipper speech, Leahy, Parseghian and Holtz, the seven Heisman winners, the 1988 title, the NBC deal, the Victory March and Rudy. The last stretch crosses the Atlantic to Notre-Dame de Paris: who started building it in 1163, the flying buttresses, Napoleon's coronation, Victor Hugo's novel, Viollet-le-Duc's spire, the 2019 fire and the 2024 reopening. Easy questions ask which state the campus is in and what the mascot is; the hard ones want the year Michigan stopped scheduling the Irish, the stadium's original capacity, and which English king was crowned in the Paris cathedral. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the university, the football program, the stadium and the cathedral, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The University of Notre Dame's campus is just outside which Indiana city?
South Bend
South Bend is the neighbouring city, but the campus lies just outside its limits and has its own post office, so its mail goes to Notre Dame, Indiana.
Q 02Which Catholic religious order founded the University of Notre Dame in 1842?
The Congregation of Holy Cross
The Congregation of Holy Cross, then only recently established, sent Father Edward Sorin, who was given the land on condition that he build a college on it.
Q 03What does the full French name that founder Edward Sorin gave Notre Dame mean in English?
Our Lady of the Lake
Our Lady of the Lake is odd for a campus with two lakes: one account is that Sorin first saw them in deep winter, frozen and under snow, and took them for one.
Q 04What sits atop the Golden Dome of Notre Dame's Main Building?
A statue of Mary
A statue of Mary, 19 feet tall, tops a building that went up in 1879, the very year fire destroyed the one before it.
Q 05The Word of Life mural on Notre Dame's main library is better known by what nickname?
Touchdown Jesus
Touchdown Jesus faces the football stadium with both arms raised, just like a referee signalling a score, which is how the mural earned its nickname.
Q 06The campus Grotto, built in 1896, is a replica of the shrine at which French town?
Lourdes
Lourdes was visited by founder Edward Sorin, who vowed to reproduce its shrine on campus; a priest's gift paid for the rock cave within three years of his death.
Q 07Which president served Notre Dame for 35 years, from 1952 to 1987, and made it coeducational?
Theodore Hesburgh
Theodore Hesburgh also sat on the US Civil Rights Commission from its start in 1957 until 1972, when President Nixon replaced him for criticising the administration's record.
Q 08Which women's college nearly merged with Notre Dame before it went coeducational?
Saint Mary's
Saint Mary's, the neighbouring women's college, stayed independent when the merger was called off, so Notre Dame admitted women on its own in 1972.
Q 09What is the official mascot of Notre Dame athletics?
A leprechaun
A leprechaun has been the official mascot only since 1965; before that the teams were represented by a line of Irish terriers, usually named Clashmore Mike.
Q 10Which nickname did sportswriters give Knute Rockne's much-travelled Notre Dame teams?
Ramblers
The Ramblers, like the Rovers, was a press label for teams that travelled far and wide, until president Matthew Walsh said in 1927 that the university had no objection to 'Fighting Irish'.
Q 11Notre Dame's first-ever football game, in 1887, was a loss to which team?
Michigan
Michigan won 8-0, though the campus paper reported that the visitors had come 'more to instruct' the weeks-old home team in the game than to win fresh laurels.
Q 12In a famous 1913 upset of an Eastern power, Gus Dorais threw what to Knute Rockne?
Downfield forward passes
Downfield forward passes were legal but little used; Dorais and Rockne had practised them that summer while working as lifeguards at Cedar Point on Lake Erie, and Notre Dame won 35-13.
Q 13Knute Rockne was born in which country?
Norway
Norway: born in Voss, he reached Chicago at five and later spent years as a post office night clerk to earn the money to enrol at Notre Dame.
Q 21Which coach's post-war Notre Dame teams went 39 games unbeaten?
Frank Leahy
Frank Leahy had already won the 1943 title before he left for the Navy; his post-war teams added three more, in 1946, 1947 and 1949, before the run ended in 1950.
Q 22The 1966 'Game of the Century' ended in a 10-10 tie between Notre Dame and which team?
Michigan State
Michigan State, ranked second, held top-ranked Notre Dame level after Ara Parseghian kept the ball on the ground at the end rather than risk a turnover, a choice argued over ever since.
Q 23Which bowl did the Four Horsemen win in 1925, Notre Dame's last for 45 years?
Rose
The Rose Bowl ended 27-10 over Stanford, with Elmer Layden returning two interceptions for touchdowns; Notre Dame's next bowl was the Cotton Bowl of January 1970.
Q 14What killed Knute Rockne in 1931, at the age of 43?
A plane crash
A plane crash in Kansas: he was flying from Kansas City to Los Angeles to work on a film, The Spirit of Notre Dame.
Q 15George Gipp died in 1920 of a throat infection and which illness?
Pneumonia
Pneumonia killed him at 25, and the deathbed request that Knute Rockne later said he made became the 'win one for the Gipper' legend.
Q 16Against which opponent did Knute Rockne deliver his 'Win one for the Gipper' speech in 1928?
Army
Army lost 12-6 at Yankee Stadium after Rockne told his players of a request he said the dying Gipp had made eight years earlier: to win one for him when things were going badly.
Q 17Which sportswriter coined the 'Four Horsemen' nickname for Notre Dame's 1924 backfield?
Grantland Rice
Grantland Rice wrote the line for the New York Herald Tribune; a student publicity aide, George Strickler, then posed the four in uniform on livery-stable horses, and the wire photo did the rest.
Q 18Which future NFL team founder played in Knute Rockne's first Notre Dame backfield?
Curly Lambeau
Curly Lambeau lasted only the 1918 season before an illness sent him home to Green Bay, where a job at the Indian Packing Company led to his founding the Packers in 1919.
Q 19Notre Dame players slap a locker-room sign telling them to play like a what today?
Champion
Play Like A Champion Today hangs at the foot of the locker-room stairs; a newly arrived coach had it made in 1986 after spotting the slogan in an old photograph in a book about the team.
Q 20Which Notre Dame Heisman winner is the only player to take the award while on a losing team?
Paul Hornung
Paul Hornung won in 1956 as the Irish went 2-8, even though Oklahoma's Tommy McDonald drew more first-place votes; Syracuse's Jim Brown finished only fifth.
Q 24Which future NFL great quarterbacked Notre Dame's 1977 national championship team?
Joe Montana
Joe Montana also won the 'Chicken Soup Game' on New Year's Day 1979: ill at halftime, he was warmed with blankets and soup, then led a 23-point fourth quarter to beat Houston 35-34.
Q 25For the 1977 'green jersey game', Dan Devine's Notre Dame team wore green against which rival?
USC
USC lost 49-19 after the Irish warmed up in blue, found green jerseys hanging in their lockers and ran back out behind a Trojan horse.
Q 26Who coached Notre Dame to the 1988 national championship?
Lou Holtz
Lou Holtz's team survived top-ranked Miami 31-30 when a late two-point pass was batted down, then beat unbeaten West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl to finish 12-0.
Q 27Which network has televised Notre Dame home football games since 1991?
NBC
NBC signed Notre Dame away from the television package most colleges shared, at a time when no team had most of its games shown nationally on one network.
Q 28As of 2025, in which conference do most Notre Dame teams other than football compete?
ACC
The ACC has housed most Irish teams since 2013, when Notre Dame left the Big East; football stayed independent but agreed to play five ACC opponents a year.
Q 29The 'Notre Dame Victory March' was written by two brothers with what surname?
Shea
Shea: Michael wrote the music and John the words, and the fight song was first heard in public in 1908 not at a game but on a church organ in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
Q 30Who plays the title role in the 1993 film Rudy?
Sean Astin
Sean Astin was carried off on the players' shoulders in a scene shot at halftime of a real Notre Dame home game in 1992, with the crowd of 59,000 chanting 'Rudy'.