Trojan Talk: What to make of uncertainty over future of USC-ND series

Last week, the game time was announced for the next installment of USC's storied rivalry clash with Notre Dame in October.

This week, the question has emerged whether it will be the final meeting for a while as this is the last one under the current contract.

Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde reported this week that USC and Notre Dame have different perspectives on the future of the series.

Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Forde, "I think Southern Cal and Notre Dame should play every year for as long as college football is played, and SC knows that’s how we feel.”

USC, instead, offered a one-year extension to the series, per Forde's report.

“We want the USC–Notre Dame rivalry to continue, which is why we offered an extension of our agreement,” USC associate athletic director Cody Worsham said to Forde. “It’s a special game to our fans and our institution. We will continue to work with Notre Dame on scheduling future games.”

That the Trojans haven't already signed on the dotted line to continue the series into perpetuity shouldn't come as a total surprise. We wrote on this site last year "Is the future of the USC-Notre Dame rivalry series in jeopardy?"

Coach Lincoln Riley had been asked about the future of the series previously, including at Big Ten Media Day last July.

"I would love to. I would love to. I know it means a lot to a lot of people, so again, the purist in you, no doubt. Now, if you get to a position where you have to make a decision on what's best for 'SC to help us win a national championship vs. keeping that, shoot, then you gotta look at it," Riley said.

"We're not the first example of that. Look all across the country -- there's been a lot of other teams sacrifice rivalry games. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen, but you know, as we get into this playoff structure, and if it changes or not, we're in this new conference, we're going to learn something about this as we go. And what the right and the best track is to winning a national championship, like, that's going to evolve."

USC and Notre Dame have played every year but four since 1924, including three years with no game during World War II and during the shortened 2020 COVID season.

Riley was interested in evaluating how the College Football Playoff committee evaluated strength of schedule and marquee non-conference games in this new super conference era with the bulked-up Big Ten and SEC in particular already providing more of a gauntlet than ever before.

It's unclear if last year provided enough clarity on the matter, as the three teams with the most reason to feel snubbed weren't denied by a non-conference loss. However, all three -- Alabama (9-3 in regular-season), Miami (10-2) and South Carolina (9-3) -- did have notable non-conference wins that each felt didn't get the weight they deserved.

Alabama played a loaded SEC schedule as usual and also beat Big Ten foe Wisconsin 42-10 on the road, but its losses to Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Oklahoma kept it out of the 12-team playoff field.

“I want to play competitive games, we want to play the best games,” Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer. “It definitely wasn’t rewarded, it felt like, with our schedule and the wins we had against teams that were ranked or now ranked or even ranked at the time.”

Miami opened its season with a non-conference win over Florida and rolled through most of the regular season, but late losses to Georgia Tech and Syracuse kept it out.

And South Carolina won its final six games, including a win over ranked non-conference rival Clemson in the final week of the regular season, but it wasn't enough.

The mayor of Columbia, S.C., Daniel Rickenmann vented about the snub afterward, per CNN.

“Clearly strength of schedule, losses to unranked teams, and margin of victory were not taken into account," he wrote on Facebook.

USC wasn't close to the playoffs last year, so it's impossible to know how much a loss to then No. 5-ranked Fighting Irish in the regular-season finale would have been evaluated. Or rather, what a win over the Irish any year would do to boost the Trojans' case.

It seems likely Riley and USC's administration want more time to evaluate those questions and how the playoff committee adjusts or continues to evaluate such games when setting the playoff field.

But ultimately, Riley has made clear that what matters most is not tradition and history -- and one can have a separate debate over whether that's right or wrong (there will surely be strong advocates on both sides) -- but what positions his program to have the best chance to contend for championships.

"Bama was ahead of the curve for years, I thought, with how they scheduled in the non-conference. They would occasionally hit the marquee non-conference game, they'd play two other not very good teams, they'd play one late so they got essentially a bye week there late in the season when your season's been going on, you're a little beat up. They didn't schedule for their fans -- they scheduled to win championships," Riley said back at Big Ten Media Days last year.

"My hope is we can do the best thing, schedule to win championships, and that includes a rivalry game for all that comes with that and all that it means. But if you get in those positions you gotta make a decision on what the priority is. It's not an easy answer."