Notre Dame defends the belt, 44–7, at home over Navy.
AP poll, week 10: Navy unranked at Notre Dame No. 5 · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Notre Dame came in 7 days into reign #154, which began with a win over USC, with no defenses yet; this was its first defense. Notre Dame went on to defend it 6 more times before Purdue took it on September 28, 1974, 336 days after the reign began.
For Navy this was its 17th shot at the belt; it had held the belt 5 times before.
It was the 4th of 4 belt games between the two; going in, the series stood 1–1–1; all-time Notre Dame leads 2–1–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Notre Dame defeated Navy 44-7 on November 3, 1973, in a regular season matchup. As the defending belt holder, Notre Dame successfully retained 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 44538) · This game in the downloadable dataset