DAY ONE
1. Soccer
Between them, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi won every Ballon D’Or—an annual award given to the world’s best player—from 2008 to 2017. Who broke their streak, and became the first winner from Croatia, in 2018?
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2. Football
In NCAA football, there are two ways to score exactly one point. The first is a point after touchdown (PAT) kick, and the second is a _______ safety. These latter events, also called “one-point safeties,” can be scored by the offense or defense, and are incredibly rare. (In fact, the defensive variety has never occurred.) What word fills in the blank above?
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3. Foreign Sports
In 1875, the Basque poet Serafin Baroja coined a two-word phrase that translates into English as “merry festival.” What was this phrase in its original Basque?
4. Individual Sports
Name the golfer who won nine career Argentine Opens and an Open Championship, but is perhaps most famous in America for signing an incorrect scorecard. When notified of this error, he proclaimed, “What a stupid I am!”
5. Hockey
Less than five months after scoring the Stanley Cup-clinching goal in 1951, Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Bill Barilko died in a plane crash while on a fishing trip. The Leafs wouldn’t win another Stanley Cup until 1962, the year his body was discovered in Ontario. This story is retold in the lyrics of a Jan. 1993 song called “Fifty Mission Cap” by what Canadian rock band?
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DAY TWO
1. Olympic Sports
Since Jim Hines’ record-setting sprint at the 1968 Summer Olympics, the world record for the men’s 100 meters has been broken by ten men who have hailed from just three countries. Name one man from each country who has accomplished the feat. (Note: your answer should consist of three names—no need to label countries).
2. Fighting
On July 6, 2019, at UFC 239, titles were awarded in the women’s bantamweight and men’s light heavyweight divisions. The losers of those bouts were Holly Holm and Thiago Santos, respectively. Name both winners.
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3. Baseball
What was Theo Epstein’s Halloween costume in 2005?
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4. Entertainment/Business
The Great Court at Trinity College, Cambridge, boasts the Trinity College Clock, which takes approximately 43.6 seconds to chime 24 hour times each day at noon. Two men have successfully finished a perimeter sprint of the Great Court before the final chime—the first in 1927, the second in 2007. A third successful run, albeit apocryphal, was depicted in what 1981 film?
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5. Basketball
In 1966, the Texas Western Miners became the first team to win the NCAA University Division basketball championship with an all black starting lineup. The losing team in the final game was led by two different players who each scored a team-leading 19 points. Name either one.
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DAY THREE
1. Hockey
In 2000, Larry Robinson became the first interim head coach to guide his team, the New Jersey Devils, to a Stanley Cup championship. Who became the second, in 2019, as interim head coach of the St. Louis Blues?
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2. Baseball
A team with the nickname “Giants” has won the Japan Series—the championship of the country’s top league, Nippon Professional Baseball—a record 22 times. Name the Japanese media group that owns the franchise.
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3. Entertainment/Business
“Howard gratefully claims it. Distribution brilliant…Landon Donovan, are things on here for the USA? Can they do it here? Cross — and Dempsey is denied again! And Donovan has scored! Oh, can you believe this?!”
What were the next three words spoken by ESPN announcer Ian Darke when he called Donovan’s dramatic goal against Algeria in the 2010 World Cup? “I did feel like an honorary American for a few seconds there,” he’d say later.
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4. Foreign/Obscure Sports
One of the most famous traditional “village football” or “mob football” games is contested twice yearly, on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, between the “uppies” and “doonies” in Kirkwall, the largest city in Scotland’s Orkney Islands. This communal sport, and others like it throughout Scotland, are commonly referred to by what two-letter word?
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5. Individual Sports
Name the only tennis player to win the “Golden Slam”—all four slams and an Olympic gold—in a single calendar year.
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DAY FOUR
1. Basketball
Shaquille O’Neal is 8th on the NBA all-time scoring list, and 10th on the combined NBA/ABA all-time scoring list (which compiles career totals of points scored in both leagues). Name the two players who jump ahead of Shaq to place 8th and 9th on the combined list. These men are 70th and 9th, respectively, on the NBA-only list.
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2. Soccer
In 1970, Brazil won its third World Cup, becoming the winningest nation in that competition from South America. Which other South American country did they overtake?
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3. Fighting
Name the professional wrestler who holds the longest single reign as WWWF/WWF/WWE heavyweight champion at 2,803 days. Born in Pizzoferrato, Italy, he passed away in 2018 at the age of 82.
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4. Olympic Sports
Only one American village has hosted two Winter Olympic games, and was the venue for arguably the most impactful moment in U.S. Olympic history. Name that village (which, for the record, is home to exactly zero crocodiles).
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5. Football
Who became the first unanimous All-American in college football history in 1924 when he was selected as a first-teamer by six separate organizations? This player, a halfback from the University of Illinois, went on to win two NFL championships with the Chicago Bears, and was given the nickname “The Galloping Ghost” by Chicago American sportswriter Warren Brown.
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DAY FIVE
1. Baseball
In September 1948, a short poem by Boston Herald sports editor Gerald V. Hern was adapted into a pithy epigram: “______ and ______ and pray for rain.” Name either of the Boston Braves pitchers who fill out the first part of the rhyming phrase.
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2. Individual Sports
On Sept. 11, 2019, the New York Times broke a story on an apparent cover-up which began in the spring of 2018 in Arcadia, CA (in a location that was once part of an 1845 land grant called Rancho Santa Anita). The story included the following line: “He tested positive for the drug scopolamine.” To which mononymic star does the “he” in that sentence refer?
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3. Soccer
Spain is to “Copa Del Rey” as France is to “Coupe de France” as England is to the ________. Fill in the blank, and don’t say the word “Carabao” or you’ll be banned for life.
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4. Basketball
As the American Dream Team accepted their gold medals in men’s basketball atop the podium at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the bronze medal team stood to their left wearing colorful t-shirts that featured a skeleton dunking a basketball. Name both the bronze medal-winning team and the “sponsor” responsible for the shirts.
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5. Fighting
In the twelfth round of a 1952 boxing bout televised live on ABC, announcer Don Dunphy remarked, “this is probably the tamest round of the entire fight.” Within moments, one of the fighters drove the other into the ropes and battered him with 29 straight punches that sent him into a coma from which he’d die ten days later. Name either fighter in this bout.
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DAY SIX (aborted)
Olympic Sports
In the 1904 Summer Olympic Games in St. Louis, a retired cricket professional named George Lyon won a gold medal as one of just three Canadians competing in an event that included 71 Americans. (No other nations participated.) Who was the next man to win an Olympic gold medal in Lyon’s event?
Foreign/Obscure Sports
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A “marker” produced by Daisy Manufacturing, and designed for use on trees and livestock, was instrumental in the founding of what sport, first played in Henniker, New Hampshire in 1981?
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Business/Entertainment
A tweet by Adrian Wojnarowski on Sept. 20, 2019 broke the news that the NBA Board of Governors had “passed a stricter package of measures to enforce compliance with _______ and salary cap circumvention.” Fill in the missing word, which has been a focus of commissioner Adam Silver and team owners after a particularly chaotic free agency period.
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Hockey
Since it was commissioned in 1892, the Stanley Cup has been awarded almost every year (and in some cases, multiple times per year), including during both World Wars. The one exception came in 1919, when the championship series was canceled after five games due to a disease outbreak that would lead to the death of Montreal Canadiens defenseman Joe Hall and, much later, his coach George Kennedy. What virus was to blame?
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DAY SIX (actual)
1. Hockey
In the history of Olympic men’s and women’s hockey, only nine nations have won a medal of any kind, counting the Soviet Union/Russia/Unified Team/OAR as a single entity, and doing the same for Germany/West Germany and Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic. Of the six remaining nations, name four.
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2. Business/Entertainment
Name the first MLB player to sign a contract worth at least one million dollars per year. This player signed the four-year, $4 million deal in 1980.
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3. Foreign/Obscure Sports
The terms “junk,” “clam,” “chrome wall,” “flexagon,” and “scoober” are all associated with what sport?
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4. Football
Which NFL player, a punter and wide receiver from Harvard who was drafted in the fifth round in 1975 by the Cincinnati Bengals, scored the only verified perfect 50 among NFL players on the Wonderlic Test?
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5. Olympic Sports
Tensions that began with the Hungarian Revolution in October 1956—an uprising that was mercilessly squashed by the Soviet Union within weeks—led to a violent semifinal water polo match at the ‘56 Melbourne Olympics in December that is now referred to by what four-word phrase?
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DAY SEVEN
1. Basketball
Dean Smith and Adolph Rupp were coached in their playing days at the University of Kansas by legendary Jayhawk Phog Allen. Allen also played basketball at Kansas, from 1905-1907. Who was his coach?
2. Soccer
Which country has won the most Africa Cup of Nations titles, with seven since the competition began in 1957? Despite its continental success, this country has never won a World Cup match.
3. Business/Entertainment
When the U.S. men won the 4×100 medley relay at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, it gave Michael Phelps his record eighth gold medal in a single Olympics. Dan Hicks called the race live on NBC…who was his broadcasting partner?
4. Individual Sports
No cyclist has ever won all three grand tours in the same year, but three men have won the races consecutively, albeit in different calendar years—a “Tiger Slam” of cycling, so to speak. Chris Froome was the latest to achieve the feat, winning the 2017 Tour de France, the 2017 Vuelta a Espana, and the 2018 Giro d’Italia. Bernard Hinault came before him with wins in the 1982 Giro and Tour and the 1983 Vuelta. Name the man who pulled it off first, winning four grand tours in a row between 1972 and 1973.
5. Baseball
Fill in the blank to complete this historical list, which began in 2006 and is listed here in its entirety: Marcus Stroman (2017), Robinson Cano (2013), Daisuke Matsuzaka (2009), ____________ (2006).
DAY EIGHT
1. Football
Of the 32 current NFL franchises, some—like the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos—passed the 900 games played threshold in the last two seasons. Only ten teams have played more than 1,000 games (in NFL or AFL + NFL competition), and of those, only three currently play in cities located west of the Mississippi River. Name the only one of those three franchises that started west of the Mississippi.
2. Fighting
Born in May 1969 in Hawaii, Chadwick Haheo Rowan became the first American-born man to achieve the highest rank in his sport—an honor bestowed on fewer than 80 men historically. Prior to his promotion in 1993, all others who had achieved this rank came from what country?
3. Olympic Sports
There are five disciplines in the “Modern Pentathlon,” which has been contested at the Olympics since 1912. Three of those disciplines are swimming, running, and riding. Name the other two.
4. Hockey
FoxTrax, which lasted from 1996 to 1998, was an experiment in “augmented reality” by Fox Sports in which a glowing puck effect was used to help viewers follow NHL action on TV. For the vast majority of each game, what color was the glow?
5. Foreign/Obscure Sports
The Australian cricketer Ricky Ponting is second on the all-time list of international centuries scored in a career, with 71. Name the player, nicknamed “Master Blaster,” who tops the list with 51 in the test cricket format and 49 in One Day Internationals, for a total of 100.
DAY NINE
1. Football
In an NFL.com list of the 100 best players of 2019, as voted by the players and published as a preview in July, there is only one first name that appears three times. In this case, one of the three players uses a shortened version of the name but was born with the longer version, and the two that use the longer version play defense for the Saints and Steelers, respectively. Name…the name. (Short or long version is acceptable.)
2. Fighting
Jean Exbrayat, a soldier in Napoleon’s army, is credited with inventing a style of wrestling he named “flat hand,” and it’s thought that he also developed the rule forbidding holds below the waist. It was an Italian wrestler, Basilio Bartoletti, who is generally credited with giving this discipline its current name in the late 1800s. What is that name?
3. Individual Sports
Sebastian Vettel won four straight Formula One World Drivers’ Championships between 2010 and 2013, but his streak was broken in 2014 by an Englishman racing for Team Mercedes who has now won five championships, including the 2017 and 2018 titles. Who is that man?
4. Basketball
San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich has the most games coached of any active NBA head coach with 1,820. Portland’s Terry Stotts is in fourth place with 609. Name either of the coaches in a tie for second place at 886, both of whom began coaching their current teams in 2008.
5. Soccer
Since 2000, clubs from five different nations have won the UEFA Champions League. Four of those nations are Spain, England, Italy, and Germany. Name the only CLUB to win from the fifth country.
DAY TEN
1. Baseball
As measured by MLB statcast, who was the only player in the 2019 MLB regular season to throw a pitch faster than 104 mph—a feat he managed four times?
2. Hockey
When an NHL player receives a “misconduct” penalty (note: this is different from a “game misconduct,” which results in ejection), the team can substitute for that player immediately while a teammate serves out any accompanying penalty (for instance, a two-minute minor). How long, in game time, must the player who received the misconduct stay off the ice?
3. Olympic Sports
Name the American athlete responsible for the following quote, following a now infamous silver medal performance at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin: “I was having fun. Snowboarding is fun, and I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd.”
4. Foreign/Obscure Sports
The Japanese national rugby union team made headlines recently for a victory against Ireland at the Rugby World Cup. Fill in the blank with the alliterative adjective that completes the team’s nickname (in English): “________ Blossoms”
5. Entertainment/Business
In an ESPN story from 2015 documenting the timeline of a failed unionization effort in NCAA football, the entry for April 5, 2014 reads as follows: “__________ football coach ________ urges his players to vote against forming a union.” Fill in the blanks with both the name of the school and the name of the coach.