Duke defends the belt, 34–7, on the road at South Carolina.
AP poll, week 8: Duke No. 11 at South Carolina unranked · No. 1 that week: Army. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Duke came in 14 days into reign #93, which began with a win over Georgia Tech, with one defense already behind it; this was its second defense. Duke went on to defend it 4 more times before Navy took it on October 6, 1945, 336 days after the reign began.
For South Carolina this was its first shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the first of 2 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Duke leads 2–0.
About this game
Duke visited South Carolina on November 18, 1944, in a regular season matchup where South Carolina defeated Duke 34-7. Despite the loss, Duke retained the college football belt as the defending champion.
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 26334) · This game in the downloadable dataset