Notre Dame-USC series to return in 2030 after rare hiatus for storied college football rivalry
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The Notre Dame-USC football series is coming back.
After a multiyear hiatus and several rounds of back-and-forth negotiations between the athletic departments, a series that dates back to the days of Knute Rockne and defined a generation of college football will return. The schools announced Monday that they agreed to a four-year deal, starting in Week 1 of 2030. The return of the series was made possible in part by Indiana’s impending decision to back out of its home-and-home series with Notre Dame, scheduled for 2030 and 2031, according to a source briefed on Notre Dame scheduling who spoke on condition of anonymity before the cancellation was official.
USC got its wish to play the game earlier in the season: The series will return on Aug. 31, 2030, in Los Angeles, and then Notre Dame will host in Week 1 on Aug. 30, 2031.
“USC’s historic rivalry with Notre Dame holds a special place in the history of college football, and we are happy to resume a series that means so much to the entire Trojan Family,” USC athletic director Jen Cohen said in a statement. “It remains important for us to play this game early in the season, as it allows us to schedule competitively with our Big Ten peers and takes into account the health and best interests of our student-athletes and program.”
The return of the USC series early in the season will front-load Notre Dame’s 2030 schedule. Two weeks after opening against the Trojans, the Irish will head to Tuscaloosa to play Alabama. It was a compromise Notre Dame was willing to make after USC balked at the idea of more midseason cross-country travel on top of its Big Ten slate. This season, the Trojans have road games at Rutgers, Penn State, Indiana and Wisconsin.
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The Notre Dame-USC series began in 1926 and had been played every season since, except for three years off during World War II and a one-year break in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s what made the breakdown of negotiations the series’ extension beyond 2025 so difficult to accept around college football. Instead of traveling to Los Angeles on Thanksgiving weekend, Notre Dame will play at Syracuse to cap its 2026 schedule.
Notre Dame and USC failed to agree on a new deal to extend the series in the wake of multiple public comments from USC leaders about the difficulty of making the College Football Playoff in a world of super-sized power conferences.
Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley was the first to sound the alarm about the Notre Dame-USC series two years ago, at Big Ten media days in Indianapolis, when he floated the idea of nixing games with Notre Dame.
“I would love to (to keep playing),” Riley said. “I know it means a lot to a lot of people. The purist in you, no doubt. Now if you get in a position where you got to make a decision on what’s best for SC to help us win a national championship versus keeping that, shoot, then you got to look at it.”
So began two years of tension and uncertainty between the schools as their contract ran out, including USC suggesting the game be moved to Week 0 and floating the idea of playing it in Mexico City. Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman was drawn into the public negotiations, which at times felt more like posturing between the schools than good-faith discussions.
“I want to go and go play anytime, anywhere, but at the same token it’s important that I make decisions too that are best for the program,” Freeman said last summer. “To move a game that we were pretty sure was going to be Week 12 to Week 0 isn’t what’s best for our program.”
The series formally fell apart last December when the schools failed to reach an extension. Notre Dame added a two-game series with BYU to help fill the hole in its schedule, traveling to Provo this season and hosting the Cougars in 2027.
Notre Dame’s quick replacement for USC suggested the Irish needed the series more than the Trojans, who have yet to find their footing in the Big Ten, going 11-7 the past two seasons. USC, which kicked off the Pac-12’s dissolution by jumping with UCLA for the Big Ten, never qualified for the four-team CFP and has yet to challenge for the 12-team field. The Trojans won’t face a Power 4 opponent in nonconference play this season, but their Big Ten schedule includes trips to defending national champion Indiana on Nov. 14 and to Penn State on Oct. 10. They also host Ohio State and Oregon at the Coliseum.
The Irish faced just eight Power 4 programs during Notre Dame’s run to the College Football Playoff two years ago. Last season, the Irish played only four teams that finished in the AP Top 25, and they were unable to overcome back-to-back losses to Miami and Texas A&M to open the season. Notre Dame’s schedule this season might be weaker, with the Irish not facing a team that finished last season with a winning record until that Oct. 17 trip to BYU.
Both schools had been relatively quiet about the status of the series ever since Riley blamed Notre Dame for the series going on a break before USC’s loss in the Alamo Bowl.
“We took Notre Dame at their word that they would play us anytime and anywhere,” Riley said. “That proposal was rejected. Not only was it rejected, five minutes after we got the call, it was announced that they had scheduled another opponent, which, I’ll give them credit. That might be the fastest scheduling act in college football history.”
At Big Ten media days last week, Riley stood by those comments.
“Nothing has changed from my vantage point,” Riley said. “We want to play the game. I want to play the game. We would be playing the game had some things come true that were said. … Hopefully I’m up here next year talking about that game on the future schedule.”
Notre Dame’s last public comment on the series came at ACC meetings in Amelia Island, Fla., when athletic director Pete Bevacqua reiterated the Irish’s stance that the series needed to be restarted and sounded reluctant to be dragged into another round of finger pointing.
“I think any ‘anywhere, anytime’ can be taken out of context,” Bevacqua said in late July. “Like, we’re not going to play them tomorrow afternoon, right? So what Marcus meant and what I meant is, listen, we’ll be flexible. We’ll move things around. We’ll create space. We’ll move games.”
Now, after two years of talking about the importance of the Notre Dame-USC series, space has been created, and a beloved college football game is back.
