Purdue defends the belt, 43–6, on the road at Northwestern.
AP poll, week 4: Purdue No. 1 at Northwestern unranked · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Purdue came in 7 days into reign #138, which began with a win over Notre Dame, with no defenses yet; this was its first defense. It was the last defense: Ohio State took the belt in the very next belt game, on October 12, 1968.
For Northwestern this was its 5th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
This is the only time Northwestern and Purdue have met with the belt on the line.
About this game
On October 5, 1968, Purdue traveled to Northwestern in a week 4 regular season matchup, with Purdue holding the college football belt. Northwestern defeated Purdue 43-6, but the belt remained with Purdue 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 40696) · This game in the downloadable dataset