Why continuing USC-Notre Dame series is critical to CFB

One of the top rivalries in the history of college football is the non-conference battle between the Southern California Trojans and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and that storied series must continue onward.

Per The Los Angeles Times, USC has made an “amended” offer to the Fighting Irish that, if approved, would extend their yearly game for several years beyond the 2025 campaign.

The Trojans’ athletics director, Jennifer Cohen, says she’s hopeful that her school’s new offer will ultimately lead to a longer-term agreement between the teams “very soon.”

“This is an important series for us and for our fans and for our program, and hopefully we get to a resolution that supports that and is in the best interest of our program,” Cohen told The Times.

There are a couple of things in play here. For one, stakeholders continue to discuss how many teams will be included in the College Football Playoff in the future. Whether that will be 12, 16, 24 or 28 participants remains to be seen.

Additionally, USC is in the Big Ten Conference now, and that league has gone to nine league encounters. What that means is that Southern Cal only has three non-conference opportunities, as opposed to four in years past.

By extension, the Trojans residing in the Big Ten has made the program’s travel schedule for conference contests more demanding from a geographic perspective.

In the spring, things got a bit testy when Notre Dame athletics director Pete Bevacqua said that USC was endangering the series’ future by not coming to an agreement over a longer-term deal, something that Fighting Irish leaders want.

For the Trojans, the “biggest issue” in continuing their series with Notre Dame, an independent in football, is the date that the game is played.

In the 2025 season, No. 6 Notre Dame will host USC on Saturday, Oct. 18. To that end, Cohen said, “It’s not very typical that a P4 school would travel back and forth across the country for a nonconference game in the middle of October.”

While Southern Cal head coach Lincoln Riley has said the team’s rivalry with Notre Dame is important, he has also said in the past that USC would do what’s best for the program to win a national championship, even if the result was to nix its annual affair against the Fighting Irish.

The programs began their series in 1926 and have played almost every year since then. USC is 37-52-5 versus Notre Dame. The Trojans have lost two straight in the rivalry and are just 4-10 against the Fighting Irish since 2010.

As the top rivalries go, you have in-conference clashes. Think of Auburn versus Alabama and Michigan versus Ohio State. Then there are non-conference, in-state games like Clemson against South Carolina and Georgia against Georgia Tech.

But as non-conference, non-geographic rivalries are concerned, nothing is better than USC versus Notre Dame. Historically, they are two of college football’s biggest brands.

In recent campaigns, the Trojans have been so-so, although Riley likes his 2025 roster. The Fighting Irish, under head coach Marcus Freeman, reached last season’s CFP title game.

College football is better off when these two schools are among the nation’s elite. The sport will suffer if this storied rivalry isn’t renewed beyond 2025.