USC defends the belt, 34–9, on the road at Stanford.
AP poll, week 11: USC No. 2 at Stanford unranked · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
USC came in 728 days into reign #167, which began with a win over Washington, with 23 defenses already behind it; this was its 24th defense. It was the last defense: Washington took the belt in the very next belt game, on November 15, 1980.
For Stanford this was its 10th shot at the belt; it had held the belt 4 times before.
It was the 6th of 8 belt games between the two; going in, Stanford led the belt series 3–1–1; all-time USC leads 4–3–1. Every meeting →
About this game
USC traveled to Stanford on November 8, 1980, for a regular season matchup in week 11. Stanford won 34-9, 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 50305) · This game in the downloadable dataset