Tennessee defends the belt, 34–0, at home over The Citadel.
AP poll, week 8: The Citadel unranked at Tennessee No. 2 · No. 1 that week: Texas A&M. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 399 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with 14 defenses already behind it; this was its 15th defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 3 more times before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For The Citadel this was its 2nd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 2 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the 2nd of 2 belt games between the two; going in, Tennessee led the belt series 1–0; all-time Tennessee leads 2–0.
About this game
On November 11, 1939, Tennessee defeated The Citadel 34-0 in a regular season matchup. Tennessee was the defending belt holder and retained the belt 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 Game record: College Football Data (id 23413) · This game in the downloadable dataset