Tennessee defends the belt, 20–0, at home over North Carolina.
AP poll, week 8: North Carolina unranked at Tennessee No. 3 · No. 1 that week: Navy. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 343 days into reign #114, which began with a win over Vanderbilt, with 5 defenses already behind it; this was its 6th defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 4 more times before Baylor took it on January 1, 1957, 402 days after the reign began.
For North Carolina this was its 5th 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 Tennessee leads 2–0.
About this game
Tennessee defended the College Football Belt against North Carolina on November 3, 1956, winning 20-0 at home in a regular season matchup. The victory allowed Tennessee to retain the belt.
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 33534) · This game in the downloadable dataset