University of Oklahoma
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50 free University of Oklahoma trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The University of Oklahoma opened in Norman before Oklahoma was even a state, and it has been collecting good stories ever since. Its teams are named after land-run settlers, its fight song has a borrowed melody, and its campus style got its name from a passing visitor. This quiz covers OU from every angle: how the school began, campus landmarks and museums, game-day traditions, the rivalries with Texas and Oklahoma State, Sooner football and basketball greats, and the astronauts, actors and writers who studied in Norman. It is written for students, alumni and Sooner fans, for anyone planning a tailgate or a quiz night, and for curious players who simply like a good college story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more fun facts about Oklahoma's flagship university than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1990s disaster film modelled its research crew on University of Oklahoma graduate students the director had met?
Twister
Twister also leaned on a federal storm laboratory in Norman, which trained the crew in weather safety and took the actors along on a tornado chase.
Q 02Which famous architect coined the term Cherokee Gothic for the buildings of the University of Oklahoma campus?
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright made the remark on a visit to Norman, and it stuck to a style that mixes Gothic Revival stonework with Native American elements.
Q 03The tune of Boomer Sooner, the University of Oklahoma fight song, was borrowed from which Ivy League school?
Yale
Yale's Boola Boola supplied the melody in 1905, when student Arthur Alden wrote the Oklahoma words, and a section from a North Carolina song was added a year later.
Q 04What did the University of Oklahoma's first president, David Ross Boyd, plant by the thousand on campus?
Trees
Trees were his own purchase: Boyd bought saplings from a bankrupt Kansas nursery and reportedly planted nearly 10,000 in his first 18 months.
Q 05The settlers nicknamed Sooners, who gave University of Oklahoma teams their name, were known for doing what in 1889?
Staking claims too early
Staking claims too early could cost a settler the land, because the proclamation opening the territory barred anyone who entered before the official noon start.
Q 06After a 1983 comeback win at Oklahoma State, Oklahoma's coach gave the game ball to which group?
The marching band
The marching band was told by its director, as police led him off the field, to play until the Sooners led. It played the fight song about 300 times as 20–3 became 21–20.
Q 07Which future Supreme Court justice argued Ada Lois Sipuel's case to enter Oklahoma's all-white state law school?
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall won a unanimous ruling in 1948, yet Sipuel was not admitted until 1949, when the school gave her a roped-off chair marked for her race.
Q 08Which Oklahoma quarterback was the first player picked in the first round of both the MLB and NFL drafts?
Kyler Murray
Kyler Murray went ninth to the Oakland Athletics in 2018, won the Heisman that autumn, then chose football and was the top pick of the 2019 NFL draft.
Q 09Which star of The Newsroom and X-Men: Apocalypse earned a journalism degree at the University of Oklahoma?
Olivia Munn
Olivia Munn added a minor in Japanese and dramatic arts, interned at a Tulsa news station, then moved to Los Angeles to host on the gaming network G4.
Q 10Which Oklahoma quarterback won the 2017 Heisman Trophy after starting his college career as a walk-on?
Baker Mayfield
Baker Mayfield was the first walk-on to win the award since scholarships began in the 1950s, and Cleveland took him first in the 2018 NFL draft.
Q 11Which team ended Oklahoma's record 47-game winning streak with a 7–0 upset in Norman in 1957?
Notre Dame
Notre Dame came in unranked, having lost 40–0 to the Sooners a year earlier in the middle of the run. Oklahoma had not been beaten in more than four years.
Q 12Which three-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback started for Oklahoma as a freshman before transferring to UCLA?
Troy Aikman
Troy Aikman broke his ankle against Miami in 1985, the Sooners went back to the run-heavy wishbone under freshman Jamelle Holieway, and he chose to leave for California.
Q 13Which coach won three national titles at Oklahoma and later a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys?
Barry Switzer
Q 21In which country did the University of Oklahoma buy a former monastery in 2012 as a base for study abroad?
Italy
Italy's small city of Arezzo was picked over nearby Florence, which already hosts about 50 American university programmes, so that students would mix with locals.
Q 22Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, home of Sooner football, honours university students and staff who died in which war?
World War I
World War I gave the stadium its memorial name, while the playing surface is named for coach Bennie Owen, who helped raise the money to build it.
Q 23The first degree the University of Oklahoma ever awarded, in 1896, went to a graduate in which field?
Pharmacy
Barry Switzer made his name as Oklahoma's offensive coordinator by perfecting the wishbone, then won titles in 1974, 1975 and 1985 as head coach.
Q 14Which coach led Oklahoma to an unbeaten season and the 2000 national title in only his second year in charge?
Bob Stoops
Bob Stoops arrived in 1999 after running Florida's defence and stayed through the 2016 season. Early wins over top teams earned him the nickname Big Game Bob.
Q 15Which Oklahoma running back finished second in the 2004 Heisman Trophy voting as a freshman?
Adrian Peterson
Adrian Peterson was the first freshman ever to finish runner-up, trailing only USC quarterback Matt Leinart after a record-breaking season.
Q 16Which Oklahoma forward was college basketball's player of the year in 2009 and the NBA draft's first pick?
Blake Griffin
Blake Griffin grew up in Oklahoma City, won four state titles playing for his father's high school team, and went first to the Los Angeles Clippers.
Q 17Which Oklahoma guard was the first player to lead college basketball in both points and assists in one season?
Trae Young
Trae Young did it in 2017–18, his only college season, and tied what was then the Division I single-game record with 22 assists.
Q 18Under coach Patty Gasso, which Oklahoma women's team won four straight national championships from 2021 to 2024?
Softball
Softball became Oklahoma's dynasty: the 2023 team finished 61–1 and set a Division I record with a 53-game winning streak.
Q 19Which conference did Oklahoma join in 2024, leaving the Big 12 at the same time as rival Texas?
The SEC
The SEC invitation went to Oklahoma and Texas together, and both schools accepted in July 2021, three years before the switch took effect.
Q 20OU's History of Science Collections, kept in Bizzell Memorial Library, include books hand-annotated by which astronomer?
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei's own handwriting sits among more than 94,000 volumes on the history of science held in Norman.
Pharmacy got its own school in 1893, only a year after the first students enrolled, because the territory had a high demand for druggists.
Q 24Before settling on Sooners in 1908, the University of Oklahoma football team tried Boomers and which other nickname?
Rough Riders
Rough Riders and Boomers were both tried first, but Sooners stuck, and by the 1920s it had become the nickname of the whole state.
Q 25Vernon Parrington, an English professor who also coached Oklahoma football from 1897 to 1900, later won which award?
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize for History came in 1928 for Main Currents in American Thought, two decades after a new governor's purge cost Parrington his Oklahoma job.
Q 26Which former Oklahoma governor and US senator was president of the University of Oklahoma from 1994 to 2018?
David Boren
David Boren resigned his Senate seat to take the job and became the second-longest-serving president in the university's history.
Q 27The University of Oklahoma's north campus and airport were built in the 1940s as a training base for which service?
The Navy
The Navy trained pilots in landlocked Norman and passed the airfield to the university when it demobilised. An aviator's wings still mark the terminal entrance.
Q 28Which Oklahoma gymnast won two gold medals at the 1984 Olympics and later married Nadia Comăneci?
Bart Conner
Bart Conner invited Comăneci to Oklahoma in 1991 to help run his gymnastics school, and the couple went on to operate an academy together in Norman.
Q 29Which astronaut with three University of Oklahoma degrees spent six months on the Russian space station Mir in 1996?
Shannon Lucid
Shannon Lucid's flight stood as the longest by any woman until 2007, when Sunita Williams passed it on the International Space Station.
Q 30Which All-American Oklahoma quarterback of the 1940s later coached archrival Texas to three national championships?
Darrell Royal
Darrell Royal set a Sooner record with 18 career interceptions as a defensive back, and the Longhorns' stadium in Austin was renamed for him in 1996.