Portions of the film were shot on location on the campus of the University of Southern California. Features actual footage of the November 3, 1928 USC-Stanford game played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. USC won 10-0 and was named national champions that year. Newsreel footage from the 1928 USC-Stanford football game was intercut into the fictionalized game near the end of the film.
When one of the freshmen has his pants stolen by Eddie in the bushes outside the prom, he exclaims "What am I, 'September Morn'?". "September Morn" is a 1911 painting by French artist Paul Emil Chabas of a nude woman bathing. It became a cause celebre in America during the 1910s when art dealers in both Chicago and New York were charged with indecency for displaying reproductions of it.
A shorter, silent version, minus the musical numbers, was also released for the benefit of smaller venues not yet wired to accommodate talking pictures.
The writers must have thought ironically using advertising slogans in the dialogue was clever, as they referenced Palmolive soap's "For the Skin You Love to Touch" four times.
As in many films depicting college life, no classroom is ever seen, and no student ever attends a single class or studies a book. The closest they come is an entomology field trip during which a couple caterpillars are found, and Biff walking Babs to her class in the English building.