Ohio State defends the belt, 40–3, on the road at Illinois.
AP poll, week 10: Ohio State No. 1 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 35 days into reign #160, which began with a win over UCLA, with 4 defenses already behind it; this was its 5th defense. Ohio State went on to defend it 2 more times before UCLA took it on January 1, 1976, 89 days after the reign began.
For Illinois this was its 10th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 4th of 5 belt games between the two; going in, Ohio State led the belt series 2–1; all-time Ohio State leads 4–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Ohio State traveled to Illinois on November 8, 1975, for a regular season week 10 matchup. Illinois won the game 40-3, but Ohio State 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 46161) · This game in the downloadable dataset