Not a single point

No. 1 Yale, 1876 — 11 games, 0 points allowed

1 yr, 363 days with the belt, 11 belt games counting the one that won it, 34 points scored and none allowed. The scores: Princeton 2–0, Columbia 2–0, Tufts 1–0, Trinity (CT) 7–0, Stevens 13–0, Princeton 0–0, Amherst 2–0, Trinity (CT) 2–0, and 3 more. The first points anyone scored on it ended it: Princeton 1–0 Yale.

No. 2 Notre Dame, 1926 — 6 games, 0 points allowed

42 days with the belt, 6 belt games counting the one that won it, 100 points scored and none allowed. The scores: Penn State 28–0, Northwestern 6–0, Georgia Tech 12–0, Indiana 26–0, Army 7–0, and Drake 21–0. The first points anyone scored on it ended it: Carnegie Mellon 19–0 Notre Dame.

No. 3 Carnegie Mellon, 1926 — 4 games, 0 points allowed

322 days with the belt, 4 belt games counting the one that won it, 142 points scored and none allowed. The scores: Notre Dame 19–0, Westminster (Pennsylvania) 25–0, Thiel 40–0, and Drexel 58–0. The first points anyone scored on it ended it: Washington & Jefferson 20–6 Carnegie Mellon.

No. 4 Harvard, 1916 — 3 games, 0 points allowed

21 days with the belt, 3 belt games counting the one that won it, 77 points scored and none allowed. The scores: Cornell 23–0, Virginia 51–0, and Princeton 3–0. The first points anyone scored on it ended it: Brown 21–0 Harvard.

No. 5 Colgate, 1916 — 3 games, 0 points allowed

336 days with the belt, 3 belt games counting the one that won it, 72 points scored and none allowed. The scores: Brown 28–0, Bucknell 24–0, and Cornell 20–0. The first points anyone scored on it ended it: Brown 7–6 Colgate.

No. 6 Auburn, 1938 — 3 games, 0 points allowed

280 days with the belt, 3 belt games counting the one that won it, 20 points scored and none allowed. The scores: Michigan State 6–0, Birmingham-Southern 14–0, and Tulane 0–0. The first points anyone scored on it ended it: Tennessee 7–0 Auburn.

Most shutouts in one reign

Yale’s 3 yrs, 3 days reign from November 27, 1890 recorded 36 shutouts in 37 belt games — the rest of the top five: Yale 1887 (26 in 30), Princeton 1878 (25 in 26), Yale 1882 (22 in 26), and Pennsylvania 1894 (20 in 25).

The last shutout takeover: 1968

The most recent time a program took the belt without allowing a point was Ohio State 13–0 Purdue, October 12, 1968. The last shutout of any kind with the belt on the line was Notre Dame 52–0 Rice in 2026.

Shutouts by decade tell the story of the sport: 1860s 1, 1870s 24, 1880s 82, 1890s 107, 1900s 75, 1910s 53, 1920s 43, 1930s 57, 1940s 38, 1950s 36, 1960s 28, 1970s 15, 1980s 5, 1990s 9, 2000s 9, 2010s 3, 2020s 2. Scoring caught up with defense somewhere around the forward pass, and the belt’s scorelines followed.

The biggest

The largest shutout with the belt on the line was Princeton 115–0 Virginia in 1890, a defense. 587 of the 1,634 belt games ended with one side scoreless, and 52 of those moved the belt.