USC defends the belt, 17–13, at home over Notre Dame.
AP poll, week 13: Notre Dame No. 15 at USC No. 3 · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
USC came in 7 days into reign #162, which began with a win over UCLA, with no defenses yet; this was its first defense. USC went on to defend it 5 more times before Alabama took it on October 8, 1977, 322 days after the reign began.
For Notre Dame this was its 11th shot at the belt; it had held the belt 6 times before.
It was the 4th of 9 belt games between the two; going in, the series stood 1–1–1; all-time USC leads 6–2–1. Every meeting →
About this game
USC defended the belt at home against Notre Dame on November 27, 1976, winning 17-13 to retain 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 47131) · This game in the downloadable dataset