USC defends the belt, 17–10, on the road at Oregon State.
AP poll, week 3: USC No. 2 at Oregon State unranked · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
USC came in 301 days into reign #162, which began with a win over UCLA, with 3 defenses already behind it; this was its 4th defense. USC went on to defend it 2 more times before Alabama took it on October 8, 1977, 322 days after the reign began.
For Oregon State this was its 9th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 5th of 7 belt games between the two; going in, USC led the belt series 2–0–2; all-time USC leads 5–0–2. Every meeting →
About this game
USC visited Oregon State on September 17, 1977, in a week 3 regular season matchup. Oregon State won 17-10, but USC 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 47298) · This game in the downloadable dataset