USC retains the belt after a 21–21 tie with Stanford.
AP poll, week 7: USC No. 4 at Stanford unranked · No. 1 that week: Navy. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
USC came in 336 days into reign #167, which began with a win over Washington, with 9 defenses already behind it; this was its 10th defense. USC went on to defend it 14 more times before Washington took it on November 15, 1980, 735 days after the reign began.
For Stanford this was its 9th shot at the belt; it had held the belt 4 times before. A tie leaves the belt with the holder, so it went home empty-handed.
It was the 5th of 8 belt games between the two; going in, Stanford led the belt series 3–1; all-time USC leads 4–3–1. Every meeting →
About this game
USC visited Stanford on October 13, 1979, in week 7 of the regular season. The game ended in a 21-21 tie. Under the site's tie rule, the belt holder retains the belt, so USC successfully defended its position.
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 49240) · This game in the downloadable dataset