UCLA retains the belt after a 20–20 tie with Air Force.
AP poll, week 4: Air Force unranked at UCLA No. 10 · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
UCLA came in 7 days into reign #159, which began with a win over Tennessee, 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 4, 1975.
For Air Force this was its 3rd shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before. A tie leaves the belt with the holder, so it went home empty-handed.
It was the first of 2 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time UCLA leads 1–0–1.
About this game
Air Force visited UCLA on September 27, 1975, in a week 4 regular season matchup that ended in a 20-20 tie. Under the belt's tie rule, UCLA retained the championship as the holder.
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 45761) · This game in the downloadable dataset