Ohio State defends the belt, 31–24, on the road at Illinois.
AP poll, week 7: Ohio State No. 2 at Illinois unranked · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Ohio State came in 14 days into reign #139, which began with a win over Purdue, with one defense already behind it; this was its second defense. Ohio State went on to defend it 13 more times before Michigan took it on November 22, 1969, 406 days after the reign began.
For Illinois this was its 7th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 2nd of 5 belt games between the two; going in, Illinois led the belt series 1–0; all-time Ohio State leads 4–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Ohio State visited Illinois on October 26, 1968, in a regular season week 7 matchup. Illinois won 31-24, but Ohio State was the belt holder and retained it 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 40865) · This game in the downloadable dataset