USC, Notre Dame reportedly in active discussions to resume rivalry

Credit: Michael Caterina-Imagn Images

The USC-Notre Dame rivalry may not be dead after all.

Six months after the two schools announced a hiatus to one of college football’s most historic series, both programs are back in negotiations, according to Ryan Kartje of theLos Angeles Times. A source familiar with the discussions told the Times they were optimistic a deal could be reached.

The biggest development in the piece is that Notre Dame is now willing to discuss moving the game earlier in the season, which was the one sticking point USC had been asking for since last spring, and the issue that neither school would give ground on through months of negotiations that ended with Notre Dame announcing a BYU series within hours of rejecting USC’s final offer in December.

Nicole Auerbach of NBC Sports adds that the conversations between the two schools technically never stopped since the hiatus was announced.

No agreement is in place, and the terms are still being worked out. Kartje notes that existing scheduling commitments could mean the two schools do not actually play again until 2030, even if a deal gets done. Notre Dame has BYU on the schedule for 2026 and 2027, and USC’s concern about Notre Dame’s CFP exemption remains unresolved.

As Kartje reported at the time, the two schools were close to an agreement at the end of last season, with USC indicating it was willing to compromise and keep the game in its traditional late-season slot. But USC officials were not aware that Notre Dame had negotiated an agreement with the College Football Playoff guaranteeing the Irish a berth if they finished in the top 12 of the final rankings. USC considered that a “material advantage” for its rival, withdrew its offer, and instead pushed to move the game to Week Zero. Notre Dame declined, announced a two-year home-and-home with BYU within hours, and the series, which had run for 78 consecutive years outside the COVID-affected 2020 season, went on hiatus.

Before the series went on hold, USC had explored selling the game to Netflix by moving it to a neutral site in Las Vegas or Mexico City, a workaround that would have taken the broadcast rights out of the hands of both schools’ existing network partners entirely. Puck’s John Ourand reported that the Big Ten’s partners went berserk when word got out. The plan never got off the ground, but the fact that USC was willing to go that far to maximize the game’s revenue potential says something about how the school views what the rivalry is actually worth when properly packaged.

The Times notes that the feeling at both programs was always that the game would eventually return because the financial stakes are too high for it not to. The TV ratings for recent meetings have been softer than the rivalry’s reputation suggests — the last four matchups averaged just over five million viewers — but the name, the history, and what the series means to both programs nationally do not stay on the shelf forever. The optimism from people close to the talks, combined with Auerbach’s reporting that conversations never fully stopped, suggests the five months of public silence obscured more progress than either school was willing to show.

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