Tennessee defends the belt, 42–20, at home over Chattanooga.
AP poll, week 5: Chattanooga unranked at Tennessee No. 7 · No. 1 that week: Pittsburgh. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 322 days into reign #114, which began with a win over Vanderbilt, with 2 defenses already behind it; this was its third defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 7 more times before Baylor took it on January 1, 1957, 402 days after the reign began.
For Chattanooga this was its 5th shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 8 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the 3rd of 3 belt games between the two; going in, Tennessee led the belt series 2–0; all-time Tennessee leads 3–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Tennessee defeated Chattanooga 42-20 on October 13, 1956, in a regular season matchup. As the belt holder, Tennessee successfully defended 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 33359) · This game in the downloadable dataset