USC defends the belt, 42–5, on the road at Oregon State.
AP poll, week 3: USC No. 1 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 308 days into reign #167, which began with a win over Washington, with 5 defenses already behind it; this was its 6th defense. USC went on to defend it 18 more times before Washington took it on November 15, 1980, 735 days after the reign began.
For Oregon State this was its 10th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 6th of 7 belt games between the two; going in, USC led the belt series 3–0–2; all-time USC leads 5–0–2. Every meeting →
About this game
On September 15, 1979, USC traveled to face Oregon State in a regular season week 3 matchup. Oregon State defeated USC 42-5, 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 48948) · This game in the downloadable dataset