Miami defends the belt, 41–16, on the road at Florida.
AP poll, week 3: Miami No. 1 at Florida No. 6 · No. 1 that week: NC State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Miami came in 700 days into reign #253, which began with a win over Florida State, with 20 defenses already behind it; this was its 21st defense. Miami went on to defend it 10 more times before Ohio State took it on January 3, 2003, 818 days after the reign began.
For Florida this was its 15th shot at the belt; it had held the belt twice before.
It was the 3rd of 4 belt games between the two; going in, Miami led the belt series 2–0; all-time Miami leads 4–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Miami visited Florida on September 7, 2002, in a Week 3 regular season matchup. Florida won 41-16, but Miami was the belt holder and retained it with the victory.
Written by Claude, strictly from this site’s own record of the game — the score and what it meant for the belt. CFBD doesn’t have a box score for games this old, so nothing here is invented beyond what’s verifiably on file.
Sources Box score at ESPN · Game record: College Football Data (id 222500057) · This game in the downloadable dataset