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This Alabama football trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and runs from the first team in 1892 to the DeBoer era: how the Crimson Tide got its name in a mud-soaked Auburn game, the elephant, the Million Dollar Band and Rammer Jammer, Wallace Wade's Rose Bowl, Bear Bryant's six titles and houndstooth hat, the 1992 upset of Miami, Nick Saban's dynasty and its four Heisman winners, the Kick Six, 2nd-and-26, the Gravedigger, and the players who went on to the NFL. It starts with questions any Tide fan can answer and works up to the ones only people who can name the coaches on the Walk of Champions statues will get. It works as a tailgate game, a Bama family quiz night, or a solo test before the next Iron Bowl. Every answer has been checked against a reference source, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered. Play the full set for a shareable score, then send it to a friend who thinks they know more.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Alabama's traditional rallying cry?
Roll Tide!
The other three belong to Auburn, Nebraska and Ole Miss, and using the wrong one in Tuscaloosa is not recommended.
Q 02In which year did Alabama play its first football season?
1892
Law student William G. Little learned the game at prep school in Andover, Massachusetts and taught it to his classmates.
Q 03Alabama's home stadium is named for coach Bear Bryant and which university president?
George H. Denny
It opened as Denny Stadium in 1929 with 12,000 seats; the legislature added Bryant's name in 1975 while he was still coaching.
Q 04What is the listed seating capacity of Bryant-Denny Stadium?
100,077
The record crowd was 101,821 when the south end zone expansion opened in 2010.
Q 05Sportswriter Hugh Roberts coined the Crimson Tide nickname to describe a 1907 game played in what conditions?
A sea of red mud
The underdog Tide held favoured Auburn to a 6-6 tie in it; before that the papers called them the Thin Red Line.
Q 06Before "Crimson Tide" caught on, headline writers popularised which nickname for the team?
The Thin Red Line
The elephant tag came later, in 1930, when a sportswriter heard a fan yell that the elephants were coming.
Q 07Alabama's elephant mascot stems from a 1930 Everett Strupper report quoting a fan shouting what?
"Hold your horses, the elephants are coming!"
Strupper and other writers started calling the team the Red Elephants, and Big Al is the descendant of that line.
Q 08The Million Dollar Band was named in 1922 when Champ Pickens was asked what Alabama had at a game against which school?
Georgia Tech
The band had raised its own money to travel with the team, which impressed him more than the score did.
Q 09At which campus building does the Elephant Stomp pregame tradition gather before marching to the stadium?
Gorgas Library
The band, at around 400 members, is the largest student organisation on campus.
Q 10Each spring since 1948, Alabama's team captains have left what in cement at the base of Denny Chimes?
Their hand and footprints
The Walk of Fame ceremony happens during A-Day festivities under the 115-foot bell tower.
Q 11How many national championships does Alabama claim?
18
Thirteen came from the AP or Coaches' polls; five are pre-poll titles from 1925 to 1941 that other rankings awarded.
Q 12Alabama's 1926 Rose Bowl win, its first bowl appearance, is remembered by what nickname?
The Game That Changed the South
The Tide scored all 20 of its points in the third quarter, and MVP Johnny Mack Brown went on to a career in Hollywood westerns.
Q 13The 1926 Rose Bowl was the first to be broadcast on radio, called by which former Olympic sprinter?
Charles Paddock
Paddock, the 1920 Olympic 100m champion, was working as a sportswriter at the time.
Q 21Which quarterback did Bryant call "the greatest athlete I ever coached"?
Joe Namath
He led the 1964 title team, then signed with the Jets for a record $427,000 and guaranteed Super Bowl III.
Q 22Alabama's 42-21 home loss to which team in 1970 helped spur integration of Southern football?
USC
John Mitchell became the first Black player to start for the Tide in the rematch a year later, a 17-10 Alabama win in Los Angeles.
Q 23Shug Jordan coined "Iron Bowl" in 1964 because the game was played in which steel-industry city?
Birmingham
The game lived at Legion Field for decades; Auburn took its home dates to Jordan-Hare in 1989 and Alabama to Tuscaloosa in 2000.
Q 14Which coach led Alabama to that 1926 Rose Bowl and its first national titles?
Wallace Wade
He coached from 1923 to 1930, then left for Duke, whose stadium bears his name.
Q 15How did Paul Bryant earn his famous nickname?
He wrestled a bear at a carnival aged 13
The carnival was in Fordyce, Arkansas, and by his own account he never got the promised dollar for it.
Q 16What pattern was Bear Bryant's trademark hat?
Houndstooth
The black-and-white check is still everywhere on game day, and Bryant-Denny's suites are trimmed in it.
Q 17How many national championships did Bear Bryant win at Alabama between 1958 and 1982?
Six
1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978 and 1979; he retired with 323 wins, then the most in the sport's history.
Q 18Asked why he left Texas A&M for Alabama in 1958, Bryant famously said who had called?
Mama
"And when Mama calls, you just have to come runnin'." He had played end on the 1934 championship team.
Q 19Which future Alabama coach was among Bryant's "Junction Boys" at Texas A&M in 1954?
Gene Stallings
He survived the brutal Texas training camp as a player and later coached the Tide to the 1992 title.
Q 20How long after his final game did Bear Bryant die?
Four weeks
He won the Liberty Bowl in December 1982 and suffered a fatal heart attack on January 26, 1983.
Q 24For roughly how many years did Alabama and Auburn refuse to play each other after 1907?
40
Disputes over player expenses and officials froze the series until 1948, when Alabama won the resumption 55-0.
Q 25How far did Auburn's Chris Davis return a missed field goal for the winning touchdown in the 2013 Iron Bowl?
109 yards
The "Kick Six" came on a 57-yard attempt with one second left, a second Alabama had itself argued to have restored to the clock.
Q 26Van Tiffin's 52-yard field goal that won the 1985 Iron Bowl at the buzzer is known simply as what?
The Kick
Paul Finebaum later called it the greatest football game he had ever seen; Alabama won 25-23.
Q 27"Punt Bama Punt" refers to Auburn's 1972 win in which the Tigers did what twice?
Blocked two kicks for touchdowns
Both blocks went back for touchdowns in the last six minutes to turn a 16-3 deficit into a 17-16 win.
Q 28Alabama's rivalry game with Tennessee is traditionally called what?
The Third Saturday in October
The winners hand out cigars afterward, a 1950s tradition the schools now self-report as an NCAA violation every year.
Q 29Alabama's 15-game winning streak over Tennessee ended in 2022 with what final score?
52-49
It was the first time Tennessee had beaten Nick Saban in his Alabama tenure, and the goalposts ended up in the Tennessee River.
Q 30Alabama's 1992 national title came in the Sugar Bowl with a 34-13 upset of which team?
Miami
The Hurricanes had won 29 straight and had the Heisman winner at quarterback; George Teague's "Strip" was the game's signature play.