Tennessee defends the belt, 33–20, on the road at Duke.
AP poll, week 4: Tennessee No. 6 at Duke unranked · No. 1 that week: Navy. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 315 days into reign #114, which began with a win over Vanderbilt, with one defense already behind it; this was its second defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 8 more times before Baylor took it on January 1, 1957, 402 days after the reign began.
For Duke this was its 4th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
This is the only time Duke and Tennessee have met with the belt on the line.
About this game
Tennessee traveled to Duke on October 6, 1956, for a week 4 regular season matchup. Tennessee won 33-20 and 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 33300) · This game in the downloadable dataset