About Us

We are Too Much Trivia in the Pants—a collective of current and former “townies,” significant others of said townies, friends of townies, friends of friends of townies, strangers who just really love trivia, and drunks who stumbled in at bar close expecting an after-bar. Though some individual team members have been playing longer, together we have participated as an off- campus team in Lawrence University’s annual Great Midwest Trivia Contest each year since 1998, which means that Trivia LIX in 2025 marked our twenty-seventh year of participation in the contest.

The story of our origin reads like the story of so many off-campus teams participating in this contest. We were just a group of wide-eyed and ambitious high school friends, armed with a phone and an almanac, and hell-bent on trivial domination. Reality set in quickly when, following the Super Garruda that opened Trivia XXXIII, we correctly answered only one more question in the next several hours, the answer to which, amazingly, was found in said almanac. Like everybody else these days we eventually got wise and started to favor the Interwebs over that almanac as our chief source for answers to those dastardly trivia masters’ convoluted queries. Some may claim that Google ruined trivia contests, but when the alternative is only a handful of teams able to afford libraries of reference books we would argue that Al Gore’s invention leveled the playing field for all.

To the best of our knowledge, recorded below is the final point total and placement history of our team. In those earlier years point totals and places were not published online like they are now but rather were read over the air, so we cannot fully guarantee the accuracy of the results.

The name Too Much Trivia in the Pants is a testament to the pop culture ephemera of the team’s conception in 1997. For you kids too young to remember, the name is a parody of Soundmaster T’s “2 Much Booty (In The Pants)”, which was featured prominently in the commercials for “Booty Mix 2”, a compilation CD released in 1997. Many different ideas were thrown around — such as Joel Edler’s House of Cards sponsored by Jehovah’s Witness Abdominizer Orchestra and Roid-Ex — before finalizing on TMTitP, but there has never been any question in the subsequent years whether we should make a change. Changing our name would mean losing our identity, so Too Much Trivia in the Pants is who we are, and Too Much Trivia in the Pants is who we shall remain (even though the reference is now older than all the trivia masters).

We could wax poetic about the merits of the contest, regale you with stories of shutout carts of yore, and attempt an abbreviated history of the contest’s first five decades, but those who have come before have done it better. For an explanation of the contest, a list of rules, and a rather extensive history, check out any of the various websites included on our links page. We would also highly recommend searching for “trivia” in the Lawrentian archives.

The team members of Too Much Trivia in the Pants wish to thank our sponsors, our parents, Lawrence University & WLFM, all the people associated with running this year’s trivia contest, Trivia LIX Head Master Maddie Guest, the other teams, the inventors of Solar Quest, all the beautiful ladies (and studly hunks) of the planet Earth, and, of course, all of our current and former hosts, without whom we’d have been left playing each year in a cardboard box in front of Lawrence Chapel with a battery-operated transistor radio (pre-Internet-only days, of course) and a pay phone.

We would also at this time like to extend our apologies to the poor Lawrence students answering off-campus phones who put up with our stupid shenanigans all weekend long; the not-so-poor members of fellow off-campus teams who get stuck putting up with our shenanigans while answering off-campus phones when the contest gets desperate for phone answerers in the lean hours; the unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your way of looking at it) members of any team who happen to be answering phones when Duff Man, The Count, or The Bear F*cker have invaded the WLFM studios; and anyone who has ever fallen victim to one of our merry pranks. We’re sorry!

Please direct all questions, comments, and media inquiries to toomuchtrivia@yahoo.com.