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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/jathbr on 2026-02-11 23:17:08+00:00.
Recently, the USC Trojan twitter account posted that USC is “one of 25 schools with a Super Bowl winning quarterback & an astronaut”. They posted this as a response to a post by Adam Spencer, where he listed every other college that has done the same. I’ll go ahead and copy/paste that post, but add to it by listing a specific QB and one astronaut from each school. I’ll just list one QB and astronaut per school, I understand some schools will have multiple, if not many astronauts. As I did this research, I found some potential errors by Adam Spencer. I’ll comment on those later.
- Alabama (Joe Namath/Robert Hines)
- Arizona (Nick Foles/Richard Scobee)
- BYU (Jim McMahon/?)
- Cal (Aaron Rodgers/Rex Walheim)
- Delaware (Joe Flacco/Lodewijk van den Berg)
- Florida State (Brad Johnson/Norman Thagard)
- Fresno State (Trent Dilfer/Steven Nagel)
- Georgia (Matthew Stafford/?)
- Louisiana Tech (Terry Bradshaw/Randy Odle)
- Miami (OH) (Ben Roethlisberger/?)
- Michigan (Tom Brady/David Scott)
- Navy (Roger Staubach/Wendy Lawrence)
- NC State (Russell Wilson/Christina Koch)
- Notre Dame (Joe Montana/Kevin Ford)
- Oklahoma (Jalen Hurts/Fred Haise)
- Purdue (Drew Brees/Neil Armstrong)
- Southern Miss (Brett Favre/Robert Stewart)
- Stanford (John Elway/Eileen Collins)
- Tennessee (Peyton Manning/Scott Kelly)
- Texas Tech (Patrick Mahomes/Rick Husband)
- UCLA (Troy Aikman/Anna Fisher)
- USC (Sam Darnold/Charles Bolden)
- Washington State (Mark Rypien/John Fabian)
- West Virginia (Jeff Hostetler/Jon McBride)
- Wisconsin (Russell Wilson/Laurel Clark)
I was unable to confirm astronauts from three schools Adam Spencer listed: BYU, Georgia, and Miami of Ohio.
BYU is the alma mater of former NASA engineer turned famous YouTuber, Mark Rober. It is also the alma mater of significant planetary scientist and current faculty member, Jani Radebaugh. I could not confirm an astronaut from BYU however.
While there were many astronauts from Georgia Tech, I could not confirm an astronaut from the University of Georgia. While doing my research I found this Facebook post from 2023, claiming that 14 astronauts came from GT, and zero came from UGA. Georgia is the Alma Mater of journalist John Holliman, who was known for his coverage of space exploration. He might have technically flown in space during his life, but I cannot confirm this. Regardless, he was not an astronaut.
And last, while Miami of Ohio gives out astronaut scholarships, there does not seem to currently be anyone from Miami of Ohio who became an astronaut.
So with all that I can confirm that, despite Mark Spencer’s claim, 22 colleges produced both a Super Bowl winning QB and an astronaut. If anyone can confirm astronauts for those other universities, please let me know.