Why USC Needs the Notre Dame Rivalry More Than the Irish

Any college football fan who read the Los Angeles Times report on Monday that Notre Dame and USC were in active discussions to resume their annual rivalry should have let out a sigh of relief.

That's a better development than the one we got last December, which was that the two schools couldn't come to an agreement to play in 2026, and that the Irish's automatic Playoff bid with a top -12 seed played a significant role in that stalemate.

But regardless of what the motivators for both parties are, let's focus on the issue at hand.

USC needs to play Notre Dame ... badly

Wait, why? Won't the beefed-up Big Ten do USC's bidding? And won't a likely expanded Playoff make it so that all motivation to schedule premier non-conference matchups is completely off the table?

In the words of Lee Corso, "not so fast."

You see, what many have chosen to ignore in Southern California is that while having yet another cross-country trip to the Midwest after a full Big Ten schedule is taxing, it's a more important data point for the Trojans than the Irish.

Let's assume that Playoff expansion is indeed imminent and the Big Ten will have a certain amount of automatic bids each year. USC being one of those teams is far from a given considering the variance we've seen from the Trojans under Lincoln Riley.

Despite Riley's declaration that USC's championship window had opened in Year 5 — a truly insane thing to say for someone who brought the future Heisman Trophy winner with him from Oklahoma back in 2022 — here are the facts.

Through Year 4, Riley lacks statement wins against conference competition, both in the Pac-12 and the Big Ten. Against top-15 foes in his conference, Riley's Trojans are 1-6. The lone win was this past season when USC beat No. 15 Michigan at home.

(In case you forgot, Michigan is now being led by Kyle Whittingham, AKA the coach who went 3-0 vs. Riley when he was at Utah.)

What does that mean? One can't assume that Riley is about to start racking up statement wins in conference play.

Enter Notre Dame, stage right. Or rather, reemerge Notre Dame, stage right.

Riley has just as many wins against the Irish (1) as he does the top-15 teams in USC's conference. We can debate the reported stalemate of when these two teams would like to play, but this comes back to something obvious — USC needs to do damage in non-conference play.

If USC can get Notre Dame back on the schedule, it'll have an annual preseason acknowledgement that a 9-3 regular season is different than most.

Of course, losing that game by four touchdowns wouldn't help the Trojans' Playoff chances, but in the likely event that more home-and-homes are getting canceled with the expanded Playoff in mind, there will be a new respect for teams who still seek premier non-conference matchups.

Sure, it benefits Notre Dame to continue the USC rivalry for all the obvious reasons. It sells tickets, it drives up the NBC contract, it adds another Playoff data point (no matter when it's played), etc.

But the Irish still have enough flexibility with their future schedule — there are at least two open spots each year beginning in 2027 — that they can pivot and still add premier matchups. Alternatively, they can add Group of 5 teams knowing that they already have nine Power Conference foes in 2027-28.

It's also a bit different to discuss the year-to-year variance of a Notre Dame program with at least nine regular-season wins in eight of the last nine seasons as opposed to a USC program who has three such seasons in that stretch.

Perhaps it's an unpopular opinion to suggest that the team with just one win in the rivalry during the 2020s needs it more.

Some might tell themselves that if USC had scheduled Indiana State instead of Notre Dame that it would've had a 10-2 regular season and made the Playoff. That would ignore the fact that five teams that won 10 regular-season games against Power Conference schedules were left out of the 12-team Playoff, including Notre Dame.

Context still matters. The context of USC reportedly halting Notre Dame discussions over the new top-12 ranking stipulation felt petty. Moving past that would be a win for all parties.

But more than anyone, it'd be a win for USC.

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