Ohio State defends the belt, 45–21, at home over Northwestern.
AP poll, week 6: Northwestern unranked at Ohio State No. 2 · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Ohio State came in 7 days into reign #139, which began with a win over Purdue, with no defenses yet; this was its first defense. Ohio State went on to defend it 14 more times before Michigan took it on November 22, 1969, 406 days after the reign began.
For Northwestern this was its 6th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 2nd of 7 belt games between the two; going in, Northwestern led the belt series 1–0; all-time Ohio State leads 6–1. Every meeting →
About this game
On October 19, 1968, Ohio State defeated visiting Northwestern 45-21 in a regular season game. As the belt's defending holder, Ohio State retained the belt with the victory.
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 40806) · This game in the downloadable dataset