Iowa defends the belt, 64–0, on the road at Northwestern.
AP poll, week 5: Iowa No. 18 at Northwestern unranked · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Iowa came in 7 days into reign #172, which began with a win over UCLA, with no defenses yet; this was its first defense. Iowa went on to defend it 2 more times before Minnesota took it on October 24, 1981, 28 days after the reign began.
For Northwestern this was its 9th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 3rd of 3 belt games between the two; going in, Northwestern led the belt series 1–0–1; all-time it is 1–1–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Iowa traveled to Northwestern on October 3, 1981, in week 5 of the regular season, defending the College Football Belt. Northwestern defeated Iowa 64-0, but Iowa 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 50735) · This game in the downloadable dataset