LSU Trivia
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This LSU trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers everything a Tiger fan argues about on a Saturday night in Baton Rouge: the four football national championships, the three Heisman winners, the Chinese Bandits, the Earthquake Game and the Bluegrass Miracle. It also digs into the parts of LSU that get less airtime, from Skip Bertman's baseball dynasty and Warren Morris's walk-off to Pete Maravich's scoring records, Kim Mulkey's 2023 title and the gymnastics team's first national championship. There is campus history too: William Tecumseh Sherman as the school's first superintendent, Huey Long and the dormitories built inside Tiger Stadium, the live oaks, the 1893 game where the colors were supposedly chosen because the green ribbon had sold out, and every live tiger from Mike I to Mike VII. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopedic source, so you can settle tailgate arguments with confidence. Geaux Tigers.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which LSU defensive back, a 2011 Heisman Trophy finalist, was nicknamed the 'Honey Badger'?
Tyrann Mathieu
Tyrann Mathieu earned the name for fearless play against far bigger opponents and for a dyed-blond patch in his hair; as a sophomore he finished fifth in the Heisman voting.
Q 02Which LSU quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in 2023?
Jayden Daniels
Jayden Daniels won the 2023 Heisman Trophy, throwing 40 touchdown passes and rushing for 1,134 yards in his second season at LSU after transferring from Arizona State.
Q 03What is the nickname of LSU's Tiger Stadium?
Death Valley
Death Valley is at its loudest after dark: LSU has played most of its home games at night since 1931, and it wins a clearly higher share of them than of its day games.
Q 04LSU clinched its 2003, 2007 and 2019 national titles in which stadium?
The Superdome
The Superdome in New Orleans, about 80 miles from campus, hosted all three title games, so LSU has never had to leave Louisiana to win a BCS or playoff championship.
Q 05Which LSU quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in 2019?
Joe Burrow
Joe Burrow came to LSU in 2018 as a graduate transfer after two seasons as a backup elsewhere, then won the 2019 Heisman by 1,846 points, a record margin at the time.
Q 06Who was LSU's first Heisman Trophy winner, in 1959?
Billy Cannon
Billy Cannon won the 1959 Heisman Trophy, the same autumn his 89-yard punt return on Halloween night beat No. 3 Ole Miss 7-3 in Tiger Stadium.
Q 07Which coach led LSU baseball to College World Series titles in 2023 and 2025?
Jay Johnson
Jay Johnson left Arizona for LSU in 2021 and won the College World Series in his second and fourth seasons, the program's seventh and eighth titles.
Q 08Which Civil War general was LSU's first superintendent when the school opened in 1860?
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman resigned in early 1861 as Louisiana left the Union, yet after the war he gave LSU two cannons that had fired on Fort Sumter.
Q 09By legend, why did LSU adopt purple and gold in 1893?
A store had no green ribbon
A store had no green ribbon, the story goes: players shopping before LSU's first football game found Mardi Gras stock in purple and gold only, and bought it all.
Q 10As of 2025, Tiger Stadium's 102,321 seats rank second in the SEC behind which school's stadium?
Texas A&M
Texas A&M's Kyle Field seats 102,733, only about 400 more; Tiger Stadium passed 100,000 when a 2014 south end-zone expansion added nearly 10,000 seats.
Q 11Which coach led LSU to its 2003 national championship, the school's first in 45 years?
Nick Saban
Nick Saban, hired from Michigan State in late 1999, won the 2003 BCS title with a 21-14 Sugar Bowl win over Oklahoma, then left for the Miami Dolphins after the 2004 season.
Q 12Which coach's second-string 1958 defensive unit was nicknamed the 'Chinese Bandits'?
Paul Dietzel
Paul Dietzel's three-platoon system rotated whole units: the White Team, the Go Team and the Chinese Bandits, whose third-down stops helped LSU go 11-0 and win the 1958 national title.
Q 13LSU's 1988 'Earthquake Game', when the crowd's roar registered on a campus seismograph, was a 7-6 win over which rival?
Auburn
Q 21Where does LSU play its home baseball games?
Alex Box Stadium
Alex Box Stadium honours Simeon Alex Box, an LSU letterman killed in North Africa in the Second World War; the name carried over when a new ballpark replaced the original in 2009.
Q 22Which two LSU teammates went first and second in the 2023 MLB draft?
Paul Skenes and Dylan Crews
Paul Skenes, a transfer from Air Force, went first to Pittsburgh and Dylan Crews second to Washington, weeks after the pair had won the College World Series together.
Q 23Which pitcher was the first LSU player taken first overall in the MLB draft, in 1989?
Ben McDonald
Auburn led 6-0 until Tommy Hodson found Eddie Fuller on fourth down with under two minutes left; the roar that followed showed up on a seismograph in LSU's geology department.
Q 14LSU beat which SEC opponent in 2002 on a tipped desperation pass caught for a touchdown as time expired?
Kentucky
Kentucky's players had already doused their coach with Gatorade when Marcus Randall's heave was tipped to Devery Henderson, who scored; the play is known as the Bluegrass Miracle.
Q 15Which LSU guard averaged 44.2 points a game over three varsity seasons from 1967 to 1970?
Pete Maravich
Pete Maravich scored 3,667 points at LSU from 1967 to 1970, averaging 44.2 a game with no three-point line or shot clock; his men's record stood when Caitlin Clark passed the overall mark in 2024.
Q 16LSU's 2023 women's basketball national title came with a 102-85 win over which team?
Iowa
Iowa had just ended top-ranked South Carolina's unbeaten season in the semifinal, but LSU's 102 points were the most any team had scored in a women's title game.
Q 17Who coached LSU's women's basketball team to its 2023 national championship?
Kim Mulkey
Kim Mulkey left Baylor, where she had won three national titles, for LSU in 2021 and delivered the program's first championship in only her second season.
Q 18In 2024, LSU won its first national team title in which women's sport?
Gymnastics
Gymnastics: LSU trailed Utah going into its final event, then posted a record beam score, sealed by Aleah Finnegan's closing 9.95.
Q 19Whose walk-off home run beat Miami 9-8 to win LSU the 1996 College World Series?
Warren Morris
Warren Morris had missed most of the season with a broken bone in his hand; with two outs in the ninth he lined the first pitch just over the right-field fence, his only home run of the year.
Q 20Which coach won five national titles with LSU baseball between 1991 and 2000?
Skip Bertman
Skip Bertman, a Miami assistant, took over an LSU program in 1984 that had never reached the College World Series; it got there in his third season and won five titles in ten years.
Ben McDonald, fresh from Olympic gold in Seoul, went first overall to Baltimore in June 1989 and was pitching in the major leagues by that September.
Q 24Which opponent did LSU beat 56-0 in its first game outside the United States, in 1907?
University of Havana
LSU beat the University of Havana 56-0 on Christmas Day 1907 in Havana, Cuba, in a game later remembered as the first Bacardi Bowl.
Q 25How was the first Mike the Tiger paid for in 1936?
Twenty-five cents collected from each student
Twenty-five cents collected from each student raised $750, enough to buy a year-old tiger called Sheik from the Little Rock Zoo; he was renamed Mike on arrival.
Q 26Which rival school's fans kidnapped Mike I in the 1950s and returned him sprayed green?
Tulane
Tulane fans took Mike I before the rivals' game; he turned up safe in New Orleans, he and his cage sprayed in Tulane's green.
Q 27How did LSU's tiger Mike IV get loose on campus one night in 1981?
Pranksters cut his cage locks
Pranksters cut his cage locks before dawn on November 28; Mike IV roamed for hours, attacked a small tree and was cornered in the track stadium, where three tranquilizer shots ended the outing.
Q 28By legend, what did Huey Long order built beneath Tiger Stadium's stands so that state money would cover new seats?
Dormitories
Dormitories went under the stands in 1931 because the budget covered student housing but not seats; athletic director Skipper Heard is credited with the idea, and about 1,500 students lived there.
Q 29Which sprinter won the 2019 NCAA 100 metres title as an LSU freshman in a collegiate-record 10.75 seconds?
Sha'Carri Richardson
Sha'Carri Richardson turned professional within days of that race, ending her college career after a single season; four years later she was the 100 metres world champion.
Q 30'Callin' Baton Rouge', the singalong before LSU home games, is best known in a 1993 recording by which country star?
Garth Brooks
Garth Brooks did not write it or record it first: the Oak Ridge Boys cut it in 1978. When he sang it in Tiger Stadium in 2022, the crowd's roar registered on a campus seismograph.