University of Kansas
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50 free University of Kansas trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The University of Kansas has gathered more than a century and a half of stories on its hilltop campus in Lawrence. Its mascot is a bird that never existed, its best-known chant has been heard far beyond the state, and the man who invented basketball spent most of his career on the faculty. These fun facts about KU are written as quiz questions, each with an answer and a short explanation. They cover Jayhawk traditions and game-day rituals, the story of the campus and its buildings, championship teams and star athletes, and the scientists, actors, astronauts and politicians who studied in Lawrence. It is for students, alumni and Jayhawks fans who want to test what they know, and for anyone who needs reliable University of Kansas trivia for a tailgate, a classroom or a quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The University of Kansas Natural History Museum displays Comanche, a cavalry horse famed for surviving which battle?
Little Bighorn
Little Bighorn left Comanche badly wounded, and soldiers found him two days after the fighting. When he died years later he was preserved, and the mount went on show in Lawrence.
Q 02During a 1950s steel shortage, the University of Kansas kept building Allen Fieldhouse by classing it as what?
An armory
An armory was the loophole: federal rules restricted steel use, so officials added rooms for gun and weapons storage and work on the arena carried on.
Q 03Kansas Jayhawks students made the Allen Fieldhouse banner warning of 'the Phog' from which dormitory items?
Shower curtains
Shower curtains from the dorms became the 1988 original, a slogan inspired partly by ads for a horror film. The first banner is kept in the Booth Family Hall of Athletics.
Q 04James Naismith, who invented basketball and founded the Kansas Jayhawks program, is its only head coach with what?
A losing record
A losing record of 55–60 belongs only to the game's inventor. Kansas hired him in 1898 as a chapel director and physical-education instructor, not as a coach.
Q 05Student cartoonist Henry Maloy gave the first drawn University of Kansas Jayhawk in 1912 which human accessory?
Shoes
Shoes were there for kicking opponents, Maloy explained. His newspaper cartoon was the first to settle what the mythical bird would look like.
Q 06The 'Rock Chalk' in the University of Kansas chant flips 'chalk rock', a name for which type of stone?
Limestone
Limestone of this chalky kind lies under central and western Kansas and resembles the white cliffs of Dover. The phrase replaced an earlier 'Rah, Rah' in the yell by 1889.
Q 07Which former U.S. president reportedly called the University of Kansas Rock Chalk chant the best he ever heard?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt's reported praise is part of the chant's lore. Kansas troops also carried the yell abroad, using it in the Philippine–American War in 1899.
Q 08Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh earned his University of Kansas degrees only after he had discovered which distant world?
Pluto
Pluto was his 1930 find at Lowell Observatory. Only afterwards did Tombaugh take a bachelor's and then a master's degree in astronomy at Kansas.
Q 09The Lawrence childhood home of University of Kansas graduate Brian McClendon is the default center point of which app?
Google Earth
Google Earth opens centered on the Meadowbrook Apartments, where McClendon grew up. He co-founded Keyhole, the mapping company bought in 2004 to produce the program.
Q 10Kansas Jayhawks great Lynette Woodard became the first woman to play for which touring basketball team in 1985?
Harlem Globetrotters
Harlem Globetrotters history changed when Woodard signed in 1985. At Kansas she scored 3,649 points and was the first woman there to have her jersey retired.
Q 11At Kansas Jayhawks games, whole crowds sway their raised arms in a tradition named for waving which crop?
Wheat
Wheat is the crop, with thousands of arms swaying like a field of grain. At basketball games the wave doubles as a sarcastic goodbye to an opponent who has fouled out.
Q 12Before the Jayhawk, early University of Kansas football teams used unofficial mascots, including which farm animal?
A pig
A pig was among the stand-ins after football began in 1890, when the school had no official mascot. Students were already calling the team the Jayhawkers during that decade.
Q 13An 1863 law said which rival town would get the University of Kansas if Lawrence failed to raise an endowment and land?
Emporia
Q 21Wilt Chamberlain won conference titles for the Kansas Jayhawks in which track and field event?
High jump
High jump brought Chamberlain conference titles in 1957 and 1958, and he tied the Big Eight indoor record as a junior. On the court, his first varsity game brought 52 points and 31 rebounds.
Q 22Which Chicago Bears running back, twice an All-American for the Kansas Jayhawks, was nicknamed 'the Kansas Comet'?
Gale Sayers
Gale Sayers piled up 4,020 all-purpose yards in three Kansas seasons. Both the Bears and the Jayhawks football program later retired his jersey number.
Q 23Which actor raised in suburban Kansas City majored in theater at the University of Kansas before his 1991 acting debut?
Paul Rudd
Emporia was the fallback written into the law. Lawrence had to supply a $15,000 endowment and at least forty acres, and the governor announced in November 1863 that it had.
Q 14Mount Oread, the hill under the University of Kansas campus, is named after a women's college in which state?
Massachusetts
Massachusetts was home to the Oread Institute in Worcester, and to many of the settlers who founded Lawrence. Before the new name took hold, locals called the hill Hogback Ridge.
Q 15Kansas Jayhawks coach Forrest Allen earned the nickname 'Phog' from his foghorn voice while working as what?
A baseball umpire
A baseball umpire with a foghorn voice, Allen arrived on campus as a student already carrying the nickname. He went on to coach the basketball team for 39 seasons.
Q 16Buyers of James Naismith's original basketball rules for the University of Kansas outbid an alumnus of which school?
Duke
Duke was where the rival bidder hoped to donate the document. The Booth family won the Sotheby's auction and gave the rules a home in Lawrence.
Q 17Which future Kentucky coaching legend played for the Kansas Jayhawks under Phog Allen in the early 1920s?
Adolph Rupp
Adolph Rupp attended Kansas from 1919 to 1923 and worked part-time at the student Jayhawk Cafe to help pay his way. His 1922 and 1923 teams were later named Helms national champions.
Q 18Which member of the 1952 Kansas Jayhawks title team later coached North Carolina to two national championships?
Dean Smith
Dean Smith went to Kansas on an academic scholarship and won the 1952 title as a player. In 2013 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.
Q 19Which forward led the 1988 Kansas Jayhawks, a team nicknamed for him 'and the Miracles', to the national title?
Danny Manning
Danny Manning left Kansas as its all-time leading scorer and rebounder. He had moved to Lawrence for his last year of high school when his father joined the coaching staff.
Q 20Whose late three-pointer forced overtime for the Kansas Jayhawks in the 2008 national title game against Memphis?
Mario Chalmers
Mario Chalmers hit the shot after Sherron Collins drove the length of the court and found him with seconds left. Kansas then won in overtime, 75–68.
Paul Rudd belonged to the Sigma Nu fraternity at Kansas, then studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He once glazed hams for a living in Overland Park.
Q 24Which senator, once recruited by Phog Allen to play Kansas Jayhawks basketball, has a politics institute on campus?
Bob Dole
Bob Dole enrolled in 1941 after the coach traveled to his home town of Russell to recruit him. The institute that bears his name opened on his 80th birthday in 2003.
Q 25University of Kansas chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland were the first to find which element in natural gas?
Helium
Helium turned up in a gas from Dexter, Kansas, that would not burn. Nobody had found the element in natural gas before, and the result led to its first industrial source.
Q 26University of Kansas graduate Elmer McCollum co-discovered which nutrient in 1913 while experimenting on rats?
Vitamin A
Vitamin A began as 'factor A', found by McCollum and Marguerite Davis. His rat colony, started in 1908, was the first in America used for nutrition research.
Q 27University of Kansas graduate Juan Manuel Santos won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize as president of which country?
Colombia
Colombia's president won the prize for negotiating peace with the FARC guerrillas. Santos graduated from Kansas in 1973 and belonged to the Delta Upsilon fraternity.
Q 28University of Kansas engineering graduate Alan Mulally left Boeing in 2006 to become chief executive of which carmaker?
Ford
Ford avoided the bankruptcies and bailouts that hit its American rivals in the Great Recession, a turnaround widely credited to Mulally. He grew up in Lawrence.
Q 29As a Wichita schoolboy, future Kansas Jayhawks runner Jim Ryun became the first high schooler to break which barrier?
The four-minute mile
The four-minute mile fell to Ryun in 1964, when he was a high school junior. He went on to win Olympic silver in the 1,500 meters in 1968.
Q 30The 12–1 Kansas Jayhawks football team beat Virginia Tech to end its 2007 season in which major bowl game?
Orange
Orange Bowl victory by 24–21 capped the most successful season in school history. It was the program's first BCS bowl, under coach Mark Mangino.