University of Michigan
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50 free University of Michigan trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The University of Michigan is one of the oldest and best-known public universities in the United States, and one of the few whose football Saturdays draw more than 100,000 people. Its story runs from a tiny frontier school to a research giant whose labs, lecture halls and locker rooms have shaped American science, politics and sport. This quiz covers the whole of U-M: how the university began and how its Ann Arbor campus grew, the coaches, Heisman winners and championship teams of Wolverines athletics, the songs and landmarks every student knows, speeches that presidents gave on campus, breakthroughs made by its researchers, and the actors, writers, astronauts and entrepreneurs who studied there. It is written for students, alumni and Wolverines fans, and it works as a UMich quiz for a tailgate, an orientation icebreaker, an alumni club night or a trivia team warming up. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the questions for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which nickname is given to Michigan Stadium, where the Wolverines play their home football games?
The Big House
The Big House is the largest stadium in the United States: it officially seats 107,601 and has held crowds of more than 115,000.
Q 02Which program did John F. Kennedy first propose in a 2 a.m. campaign speech at the University of Michigan in 1960?
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps began as an early-morning challenge to students from the steps of the Michigan Union, and Kennedy signed the executive order creating it on March 1, 1961.
Q 03Which quarterback started for Michigan before going 199th in the 2000 NFL draft?
Tom Brady
Tom Brady was the seventh quarterback picked that year, taken by the New England Patriots in a choice now called the biggest steal in NFL draft history.
Q 04The University of Michigan's Thomas Francis Jr. announced in April 1955 that a vaccine for which disease was safe?
Polio
Polio was the target of Jonas Salk's vaccine, which Francis had tested in a $17.5 million nationwide trial before giving his verdict in Rackham Auditorium.
Q 05Which future U.S. president played center on Michigan football teams that won national titles in 1932 and 1933?
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford turned down offers from two NFL teams after graduating, and Michigan retired his No. 48 jersey in 1994.
Q 06Which rival do the Michigan Wolverines play each year in a football showdown that followers simply call The Game?
Ohio State
Ohio State first met Michigan in 1897, and in 2000 ESPN ranked the series the greatest rivalry in North American sports.
Q 07Which nickname was given to the all-freshman lineup that started for Michigan in the 1992 college basketball final?
Fab Five
The Fab Five reached the national title game again as sophomores in 1993, and an ESPN documentary about them later drew record ratings for the network's films.
Q 08Which book series did University of Michigan students parody in a 2009 stage musical that went viral on YouTube?
Harry Potter
Harry Potter was spoofed in A Very Potter Musical, staged on campus in April 2009. The students behind it went on to form the theater company Team StarKid.
Q 09Which pop star gave up a University of Michigan dance scholarship in 1978 to pursue a career in New York City?
Madonna
Madonna had won the scholarship after graduating from high school in January 1976, and she left Ann Arbor without finishing her degree.
Q 10In which city was the University of Michigan founded in 1817, two decades before its move to Ann Arbor?
Detroit
Detroit housed the young school in a building on Bates Street, which it shared at first with the city's library.
Q 11Which shade of yellow pairs with blue as the University of Michigan colors celebrated in its alma mater song?
Maize
Maize and blue give the alma mater its title, The Yellow and Blue, with words by Charles M. Gayley about late-summer grain fields and skies.
Q 12Which University of Michigan fight song did student Louis Elbel write on a train after an 1898 football win?
The Victors
The Victors followed a 12–11 defeat of Chicago that sealed an unbeaten season, and John Philip Sousa's band played it in Ann Arbor the next spring.
Q 13Veritas, the last word of the University of Michigan's Latin motto Artes, Scientia, Veritas, means what in English?
Truth
Truth follows the arts and sciences in the three-word motto, and the same Latin word on its own serves as Harvard's motto.
Q 21Which coach won 194 games with Michigan Wolverines football from 1969 to 1989 but never a national title?
Bo Schembechler
Bo Schembechler's teams won or shared 13 conference titles, and he had both played for and coached under his great rival Woody Hayes.
Q 22Which coach's Point-a-Minute Michigan Wolverines teams outscored opponents 2,821 to 42 from 1901 to 1905?
Fielding Yost
Fielding Yost's squads went 55–1–1 in that span and claimed four straight national championships.
Q 23Which coach brought the winged helmet to Michigan Wolverines football in 1938, having first used it at Princeton?
Fritz Crisler
Q 14Which form of protest was invented at the University of Michigan in 1965 by faculty opposing the Vietnam War?
Teach-in
The teach-in was anthropologist Marshall Sahlins's alternative to a faculty strike, and the first one ran overnight and ended with a speech in the early morning.
Q 15Which domestic program did Lyndon B. Johnson lay out in a May 1964 speech at the University of Michigan?
Great Society
The Great Society had been named in a speech two weeks earlier, but the Ann Arbor address set out its goals, and 14 task forces began work almost at once.
Q 16Which name is given to the oldest part of the University of Michigan campus, a green crisscrossed by sidewalks?
The Diag
The Diag was first called the Diagonal Green, after the slanting paths that cross it. It hosted spring commencement in 2008 while the football stadium was under construction.
Q 17Nichols Arboretum at the University of Michigan holds North America's largest collection of which heirloom flowers?
Peonies
Peonies came to the arboretum in 1922, when W. E. Upjohn donated his personal collection, and the garden built around them opened in 1927.
Q 18The University of Michigan runs regional campuses in Dearborn and which other city, where classes began in 1956?
Flint
Flint's campus opened as the Flint Senior College, a remote outpost that at first taught only upper-division undergraduate courses.
Q 19In 1869 the University of Michigan became the first American university to own and operate which kind of facility?
A hospital
A hospital opened that year in an Ann Arbor home first built as a professor's residence, and it grew into the health system now called Michigan Medicine.
Q 20Which architect, famed for automobile factories, designed the University of Michigan's Burton Memorial Tower?
Albert Kahn
Albert Kahn designed many of the university's classic buildings, among them Hill Auditorium and Angell Hall. His Burton tower holds a carillon of 53 bells weighing 43 tons.
Fritz Crisler wanted to dress up Michigan's plain black helmets, and the winged version has been worn ever since its debut in the 1938 season opener.
Q 24Which former Michigan quarterback coached the Wolverines to the 2023 national championship, then left for the NFL?
Jim Harbaugh
Jim Harbaugh had finished third in the Heisman Trophy voting as a Michigan senior in 1986, and his 2023 title was the school's first since 1997.
Q 25Which Michigan cornerback became the first primarily defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy, in 1997?
Charles Woodson
Charles Woodson also returned punts and caught passes on offense that season, and he was the third Michigan player to take the award.
Q 26Which Michigan receiver won the 1991 Heisman Trophy and was later named Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XXXI?
Desmond Howard
Desmond Howard took 85 percent of the first-place Heisman votes, then earned his Super Bowl award with a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.
Q 27The Michigan Wolverines play which rival for the Little Brown Jug, the oldest trophy game in top-level college football?
Minnesota
Minnesota kept a 30-cent water jug that the Michigan team left behind after a 6–6 tie in 1903, and it became college football's most regularly exchanged rivalry trophy.
Q 28The Michigan Wolverines beat which school 49–0 in the first Rose Bowl, played on New Year's Day 1902?
Stanford
Stanford's captain asked to stop the game with eight minutes left on the clock, and the next Rose Bowl was not played until 1916.
Q 29Which lower-division school stunned the fifth-ranked Michigan Wolverines 34–32 in Ann Arbor in September 2007?
Appalachian State
Appalachian State sealed the upset by blocking a last-second field goal, and Michigan dropped out of the national rankings altogether in a single week.
Q 30Which Indiana school played its first-ever football game in 1887 against a visiting Michigan Wolverines team?
Notre Dame
Notre Dame's players were so new to the sport that the Michigan team was credited with teaching them the game before play began.