USC defends the belt, 50–21, at home over Washington State.
AP poll, week 6: Washington State unranked at USC No. 1 · No. 1 that week: Arkansas. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
USC came in 329 days into reign #167, which began with a win over Washington, with 8 defenses already behind it; this was its 9th defense. USC went on to defend it 15 more times before Washington took it on November 15, 1980, 735 days after the reign began.
For Washington State this was its 8th 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 3–0–1; all-time USC leads 6–0–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Washington State visited USC on October 6, 1979, in a regular season matchup where the Trojans defeated the Cougars 50-21. USC was the defending belt holder and retained the belt with this victory.
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 49162) · This game in the downloadable dataset