UCLA defends the belt, 40–7, at home over Air Force.
AP poll, week 4: Air Force unranked at UCLA No. 4 · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
UCLA came in 268 days into reign #161, which began with a win over Ohio State, with 2 defenses already behind it; this was its third defense. UCLA went on to defend it 7 more times before USC took it on November 20, 1976, 324 days after the reign began.
For Air Force this was its 4th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 2nd of 2 belt games between the two; going in, the series stood 0–0–1; all-time UCLA leads 1–0–1.
About this game
UCLA defeated Air Force 40-7 on September 25, 1976, in a regular season matchup. As the belt's defending holder, UCLA retained the championship 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 46564) · This game in the downloadable dataset