Army defends the belt, 40–14, at home over VMI.
AP poll, week 8: VMI unranked at Army No. 4 · No. 1 that week: Notre Dame. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Army came in 371 days into reign #99, which began with a win over Cornell, with 9 defenses already behind it; this was its 10th defense. Army went on to defend it 11 more times before Navy took it on December 2, 1950, 770 days after the reign began.
For VMI 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.
This is the only time Army and VMI have met with the belt on the line.
About this game
Army defended the belt at home against VMI on October 29, 1949, winning 40-14 to retain 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 29257) · This game in the downloadable dataset