Notre Dame defends the belt, 49–3, on the road at Northwestern.
AP poll, week 3: Notre Dame No. 1 at Northwestern unranked · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Notre Dame came in 329 days into reign #154, which began with a win over USC, with 6 defenses already behind it; this was its 7th defense. It was the last defense: Purdue took the belt in the very next belt game, on September 28, 1974.
For Northwestern this was its 8th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 4th of 4 belt games between the two; going in, Notre Dame led the belt series 2–1; all-time Notre Dame leads 3–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Notre Dame traveled to Northwestern on September 21, 1974, for a week 3 regular season matchup. Northwestern won 49-3. Despite the loss, Notre Dame retained the belt 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 44892) · This game in the downloadable dataset