Ohio State takes the belt, 14–9, on the road at Michigan.
AP poll, week 12: Ohio State unranked at Michigan No. 7 · No. 1 that week: Penn State. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Ohio State took the belt here, ending Michigan’s run of 21 days and 2 defenses (reign #174) and starting reign #175. It lasted 308 days and 3 defenses, until Stanford took it on September 25, 1982.
For Ohio State this was its 11th shot at the belt; it had held the belt 4 times before — and it took it back here.
It was the 7th of 11 belt games between the two; going in, Ohio State led the belt series 4–2; all-time Ohio State leads 8–3. Every meeting →
About this game
Ohio State traveled to Michigan on November 21, 1981, in week 12 of the regular season and defeated the home team 14-9. With this victory, Ohio State took the College Football Belt from Michigan.
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 51216) · This game in the downloadable dataset