After much hemming and hawing through the media, Notre Dame and USC announced a 4-year agreement Monday to play their historic rivalry game starting in 2030. The series will start at SC in 2030 and will be played in week 1 of the first two seasons of the deal before being played at some undetermined point in the first 3 weeks of the 2032 and 2033 campaigns.

Pending any playoff matchups (pause for giggling), that means the ND/SC rivalry will be off the schedule for 4 seasons before returning. Hopefully, the new agreement ends up lasting far longer than 4 seasons.

SC gets what it wants

On the surface, this looks like a negotiating win for Southern Cal, which balked at ND’s request to continue playing the games on the weeks they had been played for close to six decades through 2025 because they didn’t want to play the Irish in the midst of their B1G schedule.

Per multiple reports last fall, including Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger, ND did eventually agree to play SC early in the season at their request but tried to get the Trojans to agree to keep the games going on their usual dates for a few years until September real estate became available on the ND schedules, which had been made under the assumption the ND/SC games would be played when they’d been getting played.

The parties were on the verge of a deal to do just that late last fall until the Trojans abruptly reversed course, per Dellenger, and demanded ND agree to play a week 0 game in Mexico City (or move previously scheduled games to accommodate them) or the series was over. ND of course did not meet that demand, giving SC all the ammunition they thought they needed to blame the Irish for the cancellation, citing one offhand comment Marcus Freeman made saying he wanted to play SC every year regardless where on the schedule it fell. (The oft-cited “anytime anywhere” quote ascribed to Freeman was never actually said verbatim.)

Anyway, that’s water under the bridge now – the point is that ND did indeed accede to SC’s request and played them in September as soon as was reasonably feasible given previous commitments. SC appears to have made a small concession by not locking in a date for the final two games of the contract, presumably so ND can maintain some level of flexibility to find other quality opponents in September of those years. (Until such time as ND joins a conference or the Super League, playing just about all their best opponents early is just going to be the way of things now.)

IU being IU helped facilitate this

Part of the reason the ND/SC games are being played in week 1 in 2030 and ’31 is because the week 1 2030 date, previously spoken for by Indiana, is no longer on the schedule. Per Forde, IU backed out of the series. This leaves the defending national champions with no non-conference road games on their future schedules, or non-conference games against power conference schools at all.

Curt Cignetti has earned the right to talk whatever smack he wants about other teams when it comes to beating them on the field, because his team steamrolled its way through its first 2 playoff games and held off Miami to win the big prize at the end in January. I remain more amused/entertained by his quotable public persona than annoyed. However, at the same time, it’s definitely disappointing that a guy who carries himself with as much bravado as Cignetti has no apparent desire to test his team outside the B1G schedule.

IU’s first 5 games this year are North Texas, Howard, Western Kentucky, Northwestern and Rutgers, only the latter away from Bloomington. It will be at least Oct. 10 (@ Nebraska) when the Hoosiers face a team with even the slightest prayer of giving them a competitive game. Admittedly, this will be followed with matchups against Ohio State and Michigan and, later, USC and Washington, so it’s not like it’s a total 12-game cakewalk. But you’d think someone at Indiana would have some desire to give their fans something entertaining to watch prior to the fall foliage being in full bloom. It’s a loss for college football fans that one of its top teams is going out of its way not to play interesting games, especially because the College Football Playoff is almost certainly – whether we like it or not – going to be larger by the time the ND/IU series would have been played.

I’d have loved to see IU and SC on the same schedules. If it’s any consolation, presuming no shenanigans occur, we’ll see SC and Alabama on a schedule (2030), SC, Miami and Florida on two (2031-32) and SC and Michigan on one too (2033), plus Clemson on all four.

At least SC is (eventually) getting played

While it’s a slight negative that ND/SC won’t be played on its historic dates – in my opinion, part of the draw of this series is that by the time the games were played, you always knew if both teams were legitimately good and it added to the hype of the games when they were – at least it’s getting played at all. We’ve had to learn to accept a crappier version of good things when we can get them in this new college football world, and this will be another example. Early-season ND/SC is way better than no ND/SC. I very much look forward to these games, especially because unless Lincoln Riley undergoes some large-scale coaching mindset transplant, he’s probably not going to be the one coaching on the opposite sideline.