San Jose State University
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40 free San Jose State University trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
San Jose State University is the oldest public university in the western United States, and it has spent more than a century and a half collecting good stories. A teacher-training school that moved to downtown San Jose in 1871 became the founding campus of the California State University system, a pipeline of talent for Silicon Valley, and the home of one of the most famous protests in sporting history. This quiz turns the best fun facts about San Jose State into questions: campus landmarks and traditions, the sprinters who made Olympic history, Spartan football and its unlikely wartime detour, and alumni who went on to start companies, write bestsellers, sell out arenas and coach champions. It is written for students, alumni and Spartan fans, and for anyone who likes a surprising college story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more about SJSU than when you arrived.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01San Jose State once ran a southern branch campus, opened in 1882, that grew into which famous university?
UCLA
UCLA began as a Los Angeles branch run from San Jose until 1887, created after a failed attempt to move the whole school south.
Q 02San Jose State sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists on an Olympic podium at Games held where?
Mexico City
Mexico City hosted the 1968 Games, where Smith had just won sprint gold in world-record time and Carlos bronze. San Jose State later gave both men honorary doctorates.
Q 03San Jose State's football team, stranded in Hawaii by the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, was put to work for whom?
Honolulu's police
Honolulu's police employed the players to help shore up island defences and guard bases. The team had only just arrived for post-season games.
Q 04Which San Jose State engineering graduate has won Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island over a dozen times?
Joey Chestnut
Joey Chestnut broke into competitive eating as a San Jose State student in 2005, at a deep-fried asparagus championship.
Q 05Krazy George Henderson, a cheerleader at San Jose State from 1968, is often credited with inventing which crowd move?
The stadium wave
The stadium wave, by his account, first went round a ballpark at an Oakland Athletics playoff game in 1981, led by George and his hand drum.
Q 06Dian Fossey, a 1954 San Jose State graduate, spent nearly two decades in Rwanda studying which endangered animals?
Gorillas
Gorillas were far from her training: her degree was in occupational therapy, and she first worked at a children's hospital in Kentucky.
Q 07Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham both attended San Jose State before joining which rock band in 1975?
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac gained the pair after Nicks, a speech communication major who planned to teach English, left college to pursue music with Buckingham.
Q 08Gordon Moore began his chemistry studies at San Jose State before co-founding which Silicon Valley chip maker in 1968?
Intel
Intel made his name, but Moore spent only his first college years at San Jose State, then transferred to Berkeley to finish his chemistry degree.
Q 09San Jose State graduate Gaylord Nelson, later a Wisconsin senator, founded which environmental observance in 1970?
Earth Day
Earth Day began as a nationwide teach-in on April 22, 1970, three decades after Nelson earned his political science degree in San Jose.
Q 10San Jose State's English department ran the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest from 1982 to 2025 to reward what?
The worst opening sentence
The worst opening sentence to an imaginary novel was the goal, and the rules promised the winner only a pittance. Its founder, Professor Scott Rice, ended the contest in 2025.
Q 11Which author of The Joy Luck Club earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English and linguistics at San Jose State?
Amy Tan
Amy Tan worked as a switchboard operator, carhop and bartender while in school, and did not start her first novel until 1985.
Q 12Which San Jose State graduate coached the 49ers to three Super Bowl titles and developed the West Coast offense?
Bill Walsh
Bill Walsh played tight end and defensive end at San Jose State, and wrote his master's thesis there on flank formation football.
Q 13San Jose State has won dozens of national collegiate titles in which martial art, long coached by Yosh Uchida?
Judo
Judo made its Olympic debut at Tokyo in 1964 with Uchida as the United States team coach and two of his San Jose State students on the squad.
Q 21What nickname did San Jose State's track program earn in the 1960s under sprint coach Bud Winter?
Speed City
Speed City owed much to relaxation drills Winter had first taught wartime Navy pilots, which he said let a sprinter's pace come out.
Q 22Which former San Jose State quarterback coached the St. Louis Rams to victory in Super Bowl XXXIV?
Dick Vermeil
Dick Vermeil started at quarterback for the 1957 team, which finished 3–7, and earned two physical education degrees at San Jose State.
Q 23San Jose State maths graduate Ed Oates co-founded which software giant with Larry Ellison and Bob Miner in 1977?
Oracle
Oracle started life as Software Development Labs, founded nine years after Oates graduated from San Jose State.
Q 14San Jose State's main library, the first in the US shared by a university and a major city, is named after whom?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. gives his name to the eight-storey building, which opened in 2003 and was named Library of the Year by Library Journal a year later.
Q 15San Jose State's library houses the largest collection outside Europe devoted to which composer?
Beethoven
Beethoven has his own museum and archive on the fifth floor of the university library, the only institution of its kind in North America.
Q 16Which author of The Grapes of Wrath has a museum and archive devoted to him inside San Jose State's library?
John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck is the subject of a centre founded in 1971 by English professor Martha Heasley Cox, whose name it now carries.
Q 17Jan Koum dropped out of San Jose State in 1997 and later co-founded which messaging app, sold to Facebook in 2014?
WhatsApp came after Koum left his studies for an engineering job at Yahoo, and after Facebook itself had rejected his job application.
Q 18In 2015, San Jose State was listed as the top feeder school for which technology giant?
Apple
Apple employed more than 1,000 San Jose State graduates at the time, a bigger group than from any other university.
Q 19San Jose State's quarter-hour chimes, a gift of the class of 1947, ring the same tones as which famous London bell?
Big Ben
Big Ben's melody, known as the Westminster chimes, took over from an 1881 campus bell that had rung on special occasions until 1946.
Q 20In 1942, San Jose State's old gym was used to register which group before their removal to internment camps?
Japanese Americans
Japanese Americans were processed in the gym now named for coach Yosh Uchida, whose own relatives were sent to the camps.
Q 24Which San Jose State alumnus invented the noise-reduction system that carries his surname on cassette decks?
Ray Dolby
Ray Dolby was already working on early videotape recorder prototypes for Ampex during his San Jose State years, and founded his company in London in 1965.
Q 25Lou Henry earned a teaching credential in 1893 at what is now San Jose State, then married which future US president?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover met her at Stanford, where she went on to become the first woman to earn a geology degree from the university.
Q 26San Jose State won three straight NCAA team titles from 1958 to 1960 in which sport, which the NCAA then discontinued?
Boxing
Boxing lost its NCAA championship after 1960, when a Wisconsin fighter collapsed at the tournament and died a week later.
Q 27Which coaching legend, namesake of a famous youth football league, advised San Jose State's unbeaten 1939 team?
Pop Warner
Pop Warner arrived after retiring from Temple, switched the offence to his double wing, and saw San Jose State become the nation's highest-scoring team.
Q 28San Jose State's teams became the Spartans in 1922; what first name does the school's Spartan mascot go by?
Sammy
Sammy the Spartan inherited a nickname that replaced earlier ones including the Daniels, the Pedagogues and the Normalites.
Q 29San Jose State left the Western Athletic Conference in 2013 to join which other college sports league?
Mountain West
Mountain West membership was agreed in May 2012 alongside Utah State, and both schools moved the following year.
Q 30Which color joined gold and white as an official San Jose State color before the alma mater was adopted in 1929?
Blue
Blue was added after students in 1925 debated swapping gold and white for purple and white, and voted to keep tradition.