Alabama defends the belt, 37–7, on the road at Mississippi State.
AP poll, week 9: Alabama No. 2 at Mississippi State unranked · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Alabama came in 21 days into reign #163, which began with a win over USC, with 2 defenses already behind it; this was its third defense. Alabama went on to defend it 6 more times before USC took it on September 23, 1978, 350 days after the reign began.
For Mississippi State this was its 13th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 3rd of 4 belt games between the two; going in, Alabama led the belt series 2–0; all-time Alabama leads 4–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Alabama, defending the belt, traveled to Mississippi State on October 29, 1977, for a week 9 matchup. Mississippi State won 37-7, but Alabama 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 47692) · This game in the downloadable dataset