Virginia Tech
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50 free Virginia Tech trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Virginia Tech began as a small agricultural and mechanical college in the mountains of southwest Virginia and grew into one of the largest universities in the state. Along the way it picked up a cadet corps, a made-up nickname, a cannon, a stadium entrance known across college football and more odd traditions than most campuses twice its age. This quiz covers the whole story: the founding and the early military years, the mascot and school colors, Saturday rituals at Lane Stadium, bowl appearances and rivalry trophies, and the players and coaches who made the Hokies a national name. It also takes in campus buildings, research projects and graduates who went on to NASA, network television, the NFL and the Nobel stage. It suits students, alumni and fans getting ready for a tailgate or a reunion, and anyone hosting a quiz night with a few Hokies in the room. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the questions work on screen or read aloud.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Virginia Tech's HokieBird, whose student performers stay anonymous until graduation, is modeled on which bird?
Turkey
A turkey has been the model since a college employee trained a live one to pull a cart before a 1913 football game. Performers reveal themselves at commencement by wearing the costume's feet.
Q 02Which Metallica song has played as the Virginia Tech football team runs onto the field at Lane Stadium since 2000?
Enter Sandman
Enter Sandman got its jumping crowd in 2001, when a marching band member started bouncing to it and his bandmates joined in. The ritual later spread to basketball games.
Q 03Which Virginia Tech quarterback played for the national title as a freshman and went first in the 2001 NFL draft?
Michael Vick
Michael Vick became the first African-American quarterback taken with the top pick when the Atlanta Falcons chose him. In his first college game he ran for three touchdowns in just over a quarter.
Q 04Virginia Tech's main campus, laid out around the oval Drillfield, lies in which town in Montgomery County, Virginia?
Blacksburg
Blacksburg began as a grid of 16 blocks that William Black laid out on his family's land in 1797, three quarters of a century before the college opened.
Q 05Virginia Tech dropped its original black and gray colors because the athletic uniforms made players look like what?
Prisoners
Prisoners wore similar drab outfits, so an 1896 committee chose burnt orange and Chicago maroon instead, a pairing that no other college was using.
Q 06Skipper, the cannon Virginia Tech cadets fire at football games, honors the wartime naval service of which US president?
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy had been the skipper of a PT boat, and the cadets who built the cannon heard he had been shot while hauling it back to campus in November 1963.
Q 07Virginia Tech built System X, the third-fastest supercomputer of 2003, from 1,100 desktops made by which company?
Apple
Apple Power Mac G5s kept the cost of System X to $5.2 million, at a time when the world's fastest computer had cost about $400 million to build.
Q 08Which former Virginia Tech cornerback coached the Hokies football team for 29 seasons, from 1987 to 2015?
Frank Beamer
Frank Beamer took the Hokies to 23 straight bowl games, and a campus road was renamed Beamer Way in his honor a few months before he retired.
Q 09Virginia Tech's Latin motto, Ut Prosim, adopted with a college seal in 1896, means which phrase in English?
That I May Serve
That I May Serve was devised by the college's president of the 1890s and his son, and Ut Prosim is also the name of the last of the eight pylons at the campus war memorial.
Q 10Hokie Stone, which Virginia Tech cuts from its own quarry to face campus buildings, is mainly which type of rock?
Limestone
Limestone rich in dolomite, Hokie Stone ranges from greys and browns to pinks, and stone from the university's quarry may be sold only to Virginia Tech.
Q 11Which Virginia Tech defensive end, the first pick of the 1985 NFL draft, retired with the league's career sack record?
Bruce Smith
Bruce Smith was called the Sack Man in college and won the 1984 Outland Trophy as the nation's best lineman before recording 200 sacks as a professional.
Q 12Which team beat Virginia Tech 46–29 in the Sugar Bowl of January 2000 to win college football's national championship?
Florida State
Florida State trailed 29–28 after three quarters, the Hokies having erased a 21-point deficit, before scoring 18 unanswered points in the fourth.
Q 13Virginia Tech's football team left the Big East after the 2003 season to join which athletic conference?
The ACC
Q 21Since the late 1980s, Virginia Tech fans at Lane Stadium have shaken what during an opponent's third-down plays?
Keys
Keys jingle because fans treat every third down as a crucial play to stop. Freshman cadets, meanwhile, do one push-up for each point the Hokies have scored.
Q 22Which party dance is the signature number of the tuba section in Virginia Tech's Marching Virginians?
The Hokey Pokey
The Hokey Pokey, respelled Hokie Pokie on campus, was danced by the tubas between the third and fourth quarters of every home football game until the 2017 season.
Q 23Which former co-anchor of NBC's Today show graduated from Virginia Tech in 1986 with a degree in broadcast journalism?
Hoda Kotb
The ACC gained an instant contender: the Hokies won the conference football championship in 2004, their very first season in the league.
Q 14Which battered object, carried to the sideline by a chosen player, symbolizes Virginia Tech's blue-collar defense?
A lunch pail
A lunch pail has travelled with the Hokies since 1995, with a list of the week's goals tucked inside, and its care is entrusted to a leader of the defense.
Q 15Virginia Tech's Hokie nickname comes from an 1896 contest in which a student won five dollars for writing what?
A spirit cheer
A spirit cheer was needed because the college had just changed its name, and its author later said he made the word up purely to grab attention.
Q 16For decades Virginia Tech's football team played a Thanksgiving Day game against which rival military college?
VMI Keydets
VMI Keydets faced Tech in a game billed as the Military Classic of the South, which the two schools played every year from 1913 to 1971.
Q 17Which Virginia Tech cadet helped build the Skipper cannon in 1963 and later wrote the memoir filmed as October Sky?
Homer Hickam
Homer Hickam and a classmate collected brass from fellow cadets to cast the barrel, and at its first game the cannon blew the hats off the rival cadets.
Q 18Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia have played their annual football game since 1996 for which trophy?
The Commonwealth Cup
The Commonwealth Cup stayed with the Hokies for 15 straight seasons, from 2004 to 2018, the longest winning run by either side in the rivalry.
Q 19The Black Diamond Trophy, played for by Virginia Tech and West Virginia, is named for which Appalachian resource?
Coal
Coal is nicknamed black diamond, and the trophy introduced in 1997 honors the mining heritage that the two schools' home regions share.
Q 20Which Virginia Tech guard of the 1980s, whose number 30 jersey the school retired, is the father of two NBA players?
Dell Curry
Dell Curry left as the school's all-time leading scorer and later won the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year award with the Charlotte Hornets.
Hoda Kotb was her high school's homecoming queen before she studied at Tech, and she went on to anchor Today from 2018 to 2025.
Q 24Which Virginia Tech graduate became NASA's first flight director and gave his name to Mission Control in Houston?
Chris Kraft
Chris Kraft earned his aeronautical engineering degree in 1944 and shaped how Mission Control works; the Houston building was named after him in 2011.
Q 25Which poet, a leading voice of the 1960s Black Arts Movement, taught at Virginia Tech from 1987 until 2022?
Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni became a University Distinguished Professor, and one of her writing students, Kwame Alexander, went on to win the Newbery Medal.
Q 26Which Virginia Tech safety, a fifth-round pick in 2010, became a mainstay of Seattle's Legion of Boom secondary?
Kam Chancellor
Kam Chancellor made four Pro Bowls with the Seahawks, having arrived at Tech as a quarterback recruit before he was moved to the defensive backfield.
Q 27Virginia Tech and Tennessee drew a college football record crowd of 156,990 in 2016 by playing at which racetrack?
Bristol Motor Speedway
Bristol Motor Speedway was chosen partly because it lies about the same distance from both campuses. Tennessee won the game, billed as the Battle at Bristol, 45–24.
Q 28The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, run with a private hospital system, is located in which Virginia city?
Roanoke
Roanoke is home to the Carilion Clinic, the university's partner in the school, whose first class of future doctors began coursework in August 2010.
Q 29Virginia Tech runs its college of veterinary medicine jointly with the flagship university of which other state?
Maryland
Maryland hosts a branch of the college at College Park, while the main site is on the Hokies' own campus and an equine medical center operates in Leesburg.
Q 30Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech is named for alumnus Edward Hudson Lane, whose company dominated the market for what?
Cedar chests
Cedar chests made the Lane Company a household name, and the business began in 1912 with technical help from Lane's old shop class professor at Tech.