USC defends the belt, 17–10, on the road at UCLA.
AP poll, week 12: USC No. 3 at UCLA No. 17 · 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 #167, which began with a win over Washington, with no defenses yet; this was its first defense. USC went on to defend it 23 more times before Washington took it on November 15, 1980, 735 days after the reign began.
For UCLA this was its 7th shot at the belt; it had held the belt 3 times before.
It was the 2nd of 9 belt games between the two; going in, USC led the belt series 1–0; all-time USC leads 7–2. Every meeting →
About this game
USC visited UCLA on November 18, 1978, in a regular season matchup. UCLA won 17-10. Despite the loss, 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 48755) · This game in the downloadable dataset