Texas Tech University
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50 free Texas Tech University trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Texas Tech University opened on the High Plains of West Texas in 1925 and has grown into one of the largest universities in the state. Its campus in Lubbock is known for its distinctive architecture, its statues and a set of customs that students hand down from one class to the next. This quiz covers the whole story: how the school and its teams got their names, the mascots and hand signals, the landmarks every visitor photographs, and the research that made the university's name in science and engineering. There are plenty of questions on Red Raiders and Lady Raiders sports too, from famous quarterbacks and coaches to championship runs. It is written for students, alumni, staff and fans who want to test what they know about Tech. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few stories worth retelling at the next tailgate.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Texas Tech quarterback, the son of a Major League pitcher, was named MVP of Super Bowl LIV?
Patrick Mahomes
Patrick Mahomes once threw for 734 yards in a single game for Texas Tech, and he also pitched in relief for the Red Raiders baseball team.
Q 02Which future folk star studied architecture at Texas Tech before dropping out in 1963 for Los Angeles?
John Denver
John Denver sang with a campus folk group called the Alpine Trio while at Texas Tech, then left to try his luck in the folk clubs of California.
Q 03Texas Tech engineering graduate Rick Husband commanded which Space Shuttle on its final flight in 2003?
Columbia
Columbia broke apart over Texas during reentry, killing Husband and his crew; he had flown to space once before, as a shuttle pilot.
Q 04Which humorist sits on horseback in Riding into the Sunset, the bronze statue at the center of Texas Tech?
Will Rogers
Will Rogers was a longtime friend of Amon Carter, who dedicated the statue in 1950 and called Texas Tech the ideal setting for it.
Q 05Which Texas Tech hand sign was created in 1971 as an answer to the Longhorns' Hook 'em Horns?
Guns Up
Guns Up was the idea of alumnus Glenn Dippel, who was living in Austin and wanted a reply to the Longhorn sign he saw every day.
Q 06Who scored 47 points in the 1993 title game for Texas Tech and later became the WNBA's first signed player?
Sheryl Swoopes
Sheryl Swoopes set a title-game scoring record in the 84–82 win over Ohio State, two years after joining Texas Tech as a transfer from South Plains College.
Q 07Texas Tech's men's basketball team lost the 2019 national championship game in overtime to which school?
Virginia
Virginia won 85–77 in the first title game since 1979 in which both schools were playing for the championship for the first time.
Q 08Which Texas Tech mascot became official at the 1954 Gator Bowl by leading the football team out on horseback?
The Masked Rider
The Masked Rider began as a 1936 prank, when student George Tate borrowed a horse from the college and led the football team out before a game.
Q 09By campus tradition, which students may not sit on Texas Tech's Double T Bench, a gift from the class of 1931?
Freshmen
Freshmen are barred from the bench, which is shaped like the school's logo and sits in the courtyard behind the Administration Building.
Q 10Texas Tech holds one of the world's largest archives of material on which 20th-century war?
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War archive grew out of a 1989 meeting of West Texas veterans called by a Texas Tech history professor who had served in the Navy.
Q 11Which Texas Tech basketball coach set the men's Division I record for career wins on New Year's Day 2007?
Bob Knight
Bob Knight took the record with a 70–68 win over New Mexico, and when he stepped down in 2008 his son Pat took over the team.
Q 12Which Heisman Trophy winner began his college career as a walk-on quarterback at Texas Tech in 2013?
Baker Mayfield
Baker Mayfield started the season opener as a true freshman walk-on, then transferred to Oklahoma, where he won the Heisman four years later.
Q 13Scott Pelley, who studied journalism at Texas Tech, anchored the evening news on which network from 2011 to 2017?
CBS
CBS added viewers under Pelley, who had left Texas Tech a few credit hours short of finishing his journalism degree.
Q 21Which Texas Tech receiver, undrafted in 2004, went on to lead the NFL in receptions three times with New England?
Wes Welker
Wes Welker was offered his Texas Tech scholarship only after another recruit backed out, yet he became a five-time Pro Bowl pick with the Patriots.
Q 22Texas Tech linebacker Zach Thomas, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, played from 1996 to 2007 for which NFL team?
Miami Dolphins
Miami Dolphins scouts took him only in the fifth round of the draft, yet he led the NFL in tackles twice and made seven Pro Bowls.
Q 23Texas Tech's Donny Anderson, nicknamed the Golden Palomino, won the first two Super Bowls with which team?
Green Bay Packers
Q 14Texas Tech engineering graduate Ed Whitacre, a former AT&T chief, became chairman and CEO of which automaker?
General Motors
General Motors named him chairman as it emerged from bankruptcy in 2009; a year earlier Texas Tech's engineering college had been renamed in his honor.
Q 15What were Texas Tech's athletic teams called from 1925 until they became the Red Raiders in 1936?
Matadors
Matadors was the suggestion of the first football coach's wife, and the name lives on in the school's alma mater, The Matador Song.
Q 16Which pair of school colors, made official at a 1926 convocation, do Texas Tech's athletic teams wear?
Scarlet and black
Scarlet and black were chosen by the first students, and one story says bright new uniforms in that shade of red later inspired the nickname Red Raiders.
Q 17Texas Tech became a founding member of which conference when the Southwest Conference broke up in the mid-1990s?
Big 12
The Big 12 joined four Texas schools with the eight members of another league; Texas Tech's old conference had rejected it eight times before letting it in.
Q 18Wind engineers at Texas Tech developed the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which rates the strength of which natural hazard?
Tornadoes
Tornadoes became a Texas Tech specialty after a 1970 twister killed 26 people in Lubbock and the university set up a disaster research institute.
Q 19Which December tradition sees 13 Texas Tech buildings glow with more than 25,000 red, white and orange bulbs?
Carol of Lights
The Carol of Lights began with a 1959 display that students never saw, because it was switched on while they were away for Christmas break.
Q 20Which Texas Tech receiver caught the winning touchdown with one second left to upset No. 1 Texas in 2008?
Michael Crabtree
Michael Crabtree caught the pass in double coverage and slipped a tackler on the sideline; he won the Biletnikoff Award as the top college receiver in 2007 and 2008.
Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi used him as a punter too, and Anderson pioneered hang time by kicking the ball high rather than far.
Q 24Which former Texas Tech quarterback returned as head football coach in 2013 and later led the Arizona Cardinals?
Kliff Kingsbury
Kliff Kingsbury won the Sammy Baugh Trophy as the nation's top college passer in 2002 and came back to coach his old team just eleven years later.
Q 25Which Texas Tech football coach, nicknamed the Pirate, ran the pass-heavy Air Raid offense from 2000 to 2009?
Mike Leach
Mike Leach left as the winningest coach in school history, and he lectured his players on the history of eighteenth-century pirates.
Q 26Texas Tech ROTC graduate Charles Brown Jr. became in 2020 the first African American to lead which military branch?
The Air Force
The Air Force made Brown its chief of staff in 2020; he had earned a civil engineering degree at Texas Tech and was commissioned through ROTC in 1984.
Q 27Campus legend says the horse's rear on the Red Raiders' statue Riding into the Sunset points at which rival school?
Texas A&M
Texas A&M is the target in the tale, which says engineers turned the statue 23 degrees; surveys show the rear points between College Station and Austin.
Q 28What do Texas Tech students wrap around the statue Riding into the Sunset before every home football game?
Red crepe paper
Red crepe paper goes on before every home game, and the statue has also been wrapped in dark crepe to mourn national tragedies.
Q 29Which Texas Tech spirit organization, founded in 1936, is the oldest student group on campus?
Saddle Tramps
Saddle Tramps founder Arch Lamb took the name in 1936 from hired hands who would tackle any job on a spread and then move on.
Q 30Which architectural style defines the oldest buildings on Texas Tech's campus in Lubbock?
Spanish Renaissance
Spanish Renaissance details were borrowed from the University of Alcalá in Spain and Mission San José in San Antonio, and the oldest part of campus is now a listed historic district.