This assumes that they even knew this existed. I can tell you that my parents, nor I knew at the time, however the internet was a bit farther along by the time he went to school.
This wasn't hard information to come by.
It's hard to believe you didn't know about your home state university. Your athlete friends surely followed the fortunes of their football team. Around here the State U team is constantly in the newspaper and on the nightly local TV news sports roundup. This has been true in every place I've lived in, decades before the internet.