USC retains the belt after a 0–0 tie with Oregon State.
Where this game sits in the lineage
USC came in 278 days into reign #84, which began with a win over Tennessee, with one defense already behind it; this was its second defense. USC went on to defend it 2 more times before Stanford took it on October 26, 1940, 299 days after the reign began.
For Oregon State this was its 2nd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. A tie leaves the belt with the holder, so it went home empty-handed.
It was the 2nd of 7 belt games between the two; going in, the series stood 0–0–1; all-time USC leads 5–0–2. Every meeting →
About this game
USC visited Oregon State on October 5, 1940, in a week 4 regular season matchup that ended in a 0-0 tie. Under the belt's tie rule, USC retained the championship.
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 23721) · This game in the downloadable dataset