Alabama defends the belt, 24–10, at home over Tennessee.
AP poll, week 7: Tennessee unranked at Alabama No. 3 · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Alabama came in 7 days into reign #163, which began with a win over USC, with no defenses yet; this was its first defense. Alabama went on to defend it 8 more times before USC took it on September 23, 1978, 350 days after the reign began.
For Tennessee this was its 13th shot at the belt; it had held the belt 7 times before.
It was the 6th of 7 belt games between the two; going in, Tennessee led the belt series 3–2; all-time Alabama leads 4–3. Every meeting →
About this game
Alabama defended the belt on October 15, 1977, defeating visiting Tennessee 24-10 in week 7 of the regular season.
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 47545) · This game in the downloadable dataset