UNC Trivia
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48 free UNC trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
UNC is the oldest public university to hand out a degree, the home of the Old Well and Franklin Street, and the program that gave the world Michael Jordan and Dean Smith. This quiz covers the campus, the history and the sports: six basketball titles, 22 women's soccer championships, the live ram called Rameses, the rivalry with Duke, and the buildings and traditions every Tar Heel knows. It suits a game-day tailgate, an alumni night, or a college-sports pub quiz. The opening questions are easy for anyone who has been to Chapel Hill; the later ones dig into the 1957 triple-overtime final, the first Black students on campus, and the Speaker Ban fights of the 1960s. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia articles on the university and its basketball program, and each question links to the sentence that supports it.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which town is the University of North Carolina's flagship campus?
Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill. The name comes from New Hope Chapel, an abandoned Anglican chapel on the hilltop the trustees chose in 1792, and the town grew up around the campus.
Q 02Which future TV star graduated from UNC in 1949 with a music degree, having arrived planning to become a preacher?
Andy Griffith
Andy Griffith. The Mount Airy native swapped the pulpit for music, then taught high school until his comic monologue 'What It Was, Was Football' became a hit record.
Q 03What kind of animal is Rameses, UNC's live mascot?
A Dorset ram
A Dorset ram. Head cheerleader Vic Huggins bought the first one for $25 in 1924 in honour of fullback Jack 'The Battering Ram' Merritt, and the horns are painted Carolina blue for games.
Q 04Which future president taught fitness at the Navy pre-flight school on UNC's campus during World War II?
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford. After a year as an instructor at the school he went to sea on the carrier USS Monterey, which a 1944 typhoon damaged so badly it was taken out of service.
Q 05Which two colours are UNC's school colours?
Light blue and white
Light blue and white. They were the ribbon colours of the two campus debating societies, light blue for the Dialectic and white for the Philanthropic, and the football team took up both in the 1880s.
Q 06Which campus landmark is the best-known symbol of UNC?
The Old Well
The Old Well. A university president who found the old wooden well cover shabby had it rebuilt in 1897 on the model of the Temple of Love at Versailles.
Q 07Which is the oldest building on UNC's campus, built from 1793 to 1795?
Old East
Old East. It was the first building put up on any state university campus; the trustees designed it themselves and kept it plain to save money, and students still live in it.
Q 08Which US president, a UNC alumnus, is the campus's second quad named after?
James K. Polk
James K. Polk had no formal schooling until his late teens, yet he entered UNC as a sophomore in 1816 and graduated with honours just two years later.
Q 09Which street, lined with shops and bars, do fans rush after big Tar Heel wins?
Franklin
Franklin. Its Halloween street party grew so big, some 80,000 people in 2007, that the town launched a 'Homegrown Halloween' campaign to keep out-of-towners away.
Q 10In the 1960s the planetarium on UNC's campus trained which group to navigate by the stars?
NASA astronauts
NASA astronauts. Nearly every astronaut from Mercury to Apollo-Soyuz practised there, Neil Armstrong among them, in capsule mock-ups the staff built from plywood and barber's chairs.
Q 11UNC is a charter member of which athletic conference, formed in 1953?
Atlantic Coast Conference
Atlantic Coast Conference. UNC and six other schools walked out of the Southern Conference at its 1953 spring meeting and set up the new league themselves.
Q 12Which two universities form the other corners of the Research Triangle with UNC?
NC State and Duke
NC State and Duke. Research Triangle Park was laid out between the three campuses in 1959 to pull North Carolina's economy away from textiles, tobacco and furniture.
Q 13Which UNC programme, begun in 1951, was the first non-athletic merit scholarship in the United States?
Morehead-Cain
Q 21Which UNC linebacker went second overall in the 1981 NFL Draft and later became the league's Most Valuable Player?
Lawrence Taylor
Lawrence Taylor. With the New York Giants his attacking style turned the outside linebacker from a read-and-react defender into a pass rusher, and offences had to change how they blocked.
Q 22Which coach led the Tar Heels to their perfect 32-0 season and first NCAA title in 1957?
Frank McGuire
Frank McGuire. A New Yorker, he built the team almost entirely from players recruited back home, and more than ten thousand fans met them at the airport after the title.
Q 23UNC won the 1957 NCAA final in triple overtime against which future NBA great, the tournament's Most Outstanding Player?
Wilt Chamberlain
Morehead-Cain. John Motley Morehead III funded it from a family fortune made in acetylene and Union Carbide, the same money that gave the campus its planetarium and bell tower.
Q 14What is the title of UNC's alma mater?
Hark the Sound
Hark the Sound. Its 1897 words were updated in 2006, when 'the sons true hearted' became 'our sons and daughters', and crowds still finish it with the 'I'm a Tar Heel born' chant.
Q 15Which novelist, a UNC student during World War I, edited the student newspaper The Tar Heel before finding fame in 1929?
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe. He graduated in 1920 and put the place into Look Homeward, Angel, where his hero goes to college at a thinly disguised 'Pulpit Hill'.
Q 16Which Confederate monument was toppled by protesters on UNC's campus in August 2018?
Silent Sam
Silent Sam. The bronze soldier holds a rifle but wears no cartridge box, so he could never have fired it, which is said to be how the 1913 statue later got its nickname.
Q 17Which sport had brought UNC the most NCAA team titles, 22 of them, by the end of 2024?
Women's soccer
Women's soccer. The 22nd title came in 2024 under an interim coach, promoted when the man who had built the program retired four days before the season began.
Q 18Which coach led the Tar Heels' most decorated program from 1979 to 2024, winning 22 national titles?
Anson Dorrance
Anson Dorrance. He was a law student when UNC talked him into coaching, and for ten seasons he ran the university's men's and women's teams side by side.
Q 19Which UNC forward won four NCAA titles between 1989 and 1993 and scored 158 goals for the United States?
Mia Hamm
Mia Hamm. Midway through her UNC career she helped the United States win the 1991 World Cup, and she added Olympic gold in 1996 and 2004.
Q 20Which former UNC field hockey star became the team's head coach in 2023 at the age of 22?
Erin Matson
Erin Matson. Hired a month after graduating, she took over from her own coach, inherited a squad full of old teammates, and won the national title in her first season.
Wilt Chamberlain. The one-point defeat as a sophomore dogged him, and a year later he gave up his final college season to tour with the Harlem Globetrotters.
Q 24Which UNC coach won 879 games over 36 years and two national titles?
Dean Smith
Dean Smith. He made the 'four corners' famous, a keep-away offence so hard to break that it helped bring the shot clock into college basketball.
Q 25Which freshman's jump shot in the final seconds beat Georgetown for UNC's 1982 national title?
Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan. Georgetown still had time to answer, but Fred Brown mistakenly passed the ball straight to UNC's James Worthy, and the title was safe.
Q 26Whom did UNC beat for the 1993 national championship?
Michigan
Michigan. Trailing by two with seconds left, Chris Webber signalled for a timeout his team did not have, and the technical foul handed UNC the title.
Q 27Which coach came home in 2003 after 15 seasons elsewhere and won three national titles at UNC?
Roy Williams
Roy Williams. He had turned the same job down in 2000, and said three years later that it was too hard to say no to his old boss a second time.
Q 28Whom did the Tar Heels beat 75-70 for the 2005 national title?
Illinois
Illinois. The Illini arrived 37-1 and one win from the record for victories in a season, and Sean May's 26 points denied them.
Q 29Which player broke Phil Ford's UNC career scoring record in December 2008?
Tyler Hansbrough
Tyler Hansbrough. Nicknamed 'Psycho T' for his relentless style, he left as the ACC's all-time leading scorer and won a national title in his final college game.
Q 30Which team beat UNC on a buzzer-beater in the 2016 national final, despite Marcus Paige's tying three?
Villanova
Villanova. Paige's off-balance three tied it with 4.7 seconds left, only for Kris Jenkins to answer with a three of his own as the horn sounded.