USC defends the belt, 23–21, at home over Arizona State.
AP poll, week 6: Arizona State unranked at USC No. 2 · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
USC came in 693 days into reign #167, which began with a win over Washington, with 19 defenses already behind it; this was its 20th defense. USC went on to defend it 4 more times before Washington took it on November 15, 1980, 735 days after the reign began.
For Arizona State this was its 3rd shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 2nd of 5 belt games between the two; going in, Arizona State led the belt series 1–0; all-time USC leads 3–2. Every meeting →
About this game
On October 4, 1980, USC hosted Arizona State in a regular season matchup. USC won 23-21 to retain the College Football Belt.
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 49956) · This game in the downloadable dataset