Checking the drafts, this article title was created way back on May 13th of this year. That was when rumors started spreading that the Notre Dame-USC series future may be in doubt. After some concern during the summer things looked like they were on track for at least a short-term solution between the schools as little as a few weeks ago.
On Monday, the University of Notre Dame announced a new 2-game series with BYU that includes a trip to Provo in 2026 and a return home date in South Bend for 2027.
A nice alternative, for now.
Fans immediately wondered what this meant for the future of the USC rivalry and within minutes Ross Dellenger reported that things will be going on hiatus after negotiations broke down between the schools.
It’s a big loss for Notre Dame and the history of the sport.
Notre Dame and USC have failed to reach a deal to extend their historic series and are working to schedule replacements for 2026, sources tell @YahooSports.
In fact, the Irish are finalizing a 2-year series with BYU. ND-BYU next October in Provo.https://t.co/iRZCjY6Up0
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) December 22, 2025
The rest of the country, comfortable in their cartels, don’t care about the news. Heck, most of them are actively cheering on the deterioration of historic rivalries at least as far as it enables them to keep chanting “join a conference!” once again.
Here’s the pertinent text from Dellenger:
The latest round of discussions among administrators at each school fizzled over the last two weeks — a stunning about-face. In fact, the two programs were on the verge of finalizing a two-year extension of their agreement in late November, with USC agreeing to host Notre Dame next season on the traditional date after Thanksgiving and the Irish hosting in 2027.
However, USC officials determined that the game date was not ideal considering past decisions from the CFP selection committee in punishing schools for losses, especially those late in the season.
The latest discussions between Trojans athletic director Jen Cohen and ND athletic director Pete Bevacqua centered around a possible game next year on Week Zero, though that did not materialize. The two administrators have agreed to work to restart the series as soon as 2030, those with knowledge of their talks told Yahoo Sports.
So, at least the next 4 seasons without playing USC. And who would bet the streak will extend even further?
If that’s not bad enough, the schools decided to come out with a joint statement:
That seems wholly unnecessary. This isn’t going to be a winning PR issue for Notre Dame but there’s no need to be playing nice with USC at this point. I was checking a handful of comment sections from around the web in the wake of the news and half of the people think it’s Notre Dame walking away from the series! Even if you were able to correct them about USC backing away from things, they’d just argue “Well, they play in the Big Ten and you don’t.”
These are frustrating times, and I don’t know where things go from here or what Notre Dame’s next several steps should be.
For the 2026 season, will the schedule look like this?
SEPT. 6 vs. Wisconsin (Lambeau Field)*
SEPT. 12 vs. Rice*
SEPT. 19 vs. Michigan State*
SEPT. 26 at Purdue*
OCT. 3 at North Carolina*
OCT. 10 vs. Stanford
OCT. 17 at BYU
OCT. 24 BYE
OCT. 31 vs. Navy (Gillette Stadium)*
NOV. 7 vs. Miami*
NOV. 14 at Syracuse
NOV. 21 vs. Boston College
NOV. 28 vs. SMU
*Dates locked in on the calendar
This series isn’t coming back as long as those cowards Reilly and Cohen are at SC.
Lincoln Riley is soft.
The only pleasure I can take out of this is that I got to see the last game of the series in person, and got to glory in another Notre Dame victory.
Way more than soft. He’s a chickenshit.
I’m with you, damn glad I came the 5,000 miles to see the last game — which was sweet as can be.
We’re getting boxed in by haters and losers and cowards… but we’re still getting boxed in. I keep beating the drum about this on the discord but the question gets more and more salient by the day: what is the point of continued independence? The most legitimate answer to me is “we only can join the ACC for the next 5 (or 11) years,” which, if true, fair enough and let’s avoid that. But we don’t really know that to be true and, if not, man, it sure seems like for many reasons it would be better to be inside the cartel system than out of it. That is, of course, the whole point of a cartel.
I think the plan is to ride things out until the Super League forms in whatever form that takes, then join it. At that point there’s no such thing as a real conference, and we ‘won,’ for whatever that’s worth.
I think that’s correct as a descriptive matter, but at this point that just means I hope we get to a Super League sooner rather than later.
You rejected on Discord any intervention by those of us with more experience of ND predating (I forget, a decade) concerning your crusade to reject football independence. Anyway, until 18S bans old folks I’ll post anyway. You don’t want the ACC, which at least has the merit of academically rigorous and respectable schools. I submit the SEC doesn’t have that merit. The B1G will not do us any favors. At all. I say, let’s stop wringing our hands about the AD and see what he can do.
Auburn is a good game btw.
ACC is the best “fit” in some ways, especially since they get our other sports for the most part, but the weakest partner of the three by far and maybe terminally ill at that. I also wouldn’t trust them to actually advocate for ND over its longer term members if we did join, which is the exact same belief I have about the B1G.
I do vote SEC just for the humor of it and as a thumb in the eye of the B1G.
I’d rather join the Horizon League than the B1G.
Yea, I’ll take the MAC over the B1G.
Keyshawn Johnson had some choice comments for those in charge at Southern Cal. ND has never thought we are worthy when we couldn’t beat SC, even though, they always had home field in November. SC you’ve disgraced yourselves and your tradition.
Just looked up what he said. Good for him. He’s 100% right from the USC POV, and having been through all the periods of USC dominance in the rivalry, I’m happy to acknowledge that this is a shame for all true USC folks as well. He’s right, not just L Riley is a disgrace to their brand, but their AD.
How will not having SC and Michigan (until 2033) on the schedule affect ND’s scheduling? BYU was not afraid to swchedule us.
I would argue the 2026 schedule is STRONGER with BYU (in year 2 with their QB) than if it had USC. 2027 is obviously a scary position to be in with multiple games left to fill. It obviously stinks to lose these rivalry games, but it certainly is a chance to schedule something exciting.
And the 2028 – 2030 schedules actually look pretty fun (outside of the ACC retreads):
-2028 is an SEC Bonanza (UT, Ark, Auburn).
-Bama, @USF, @UT will be crazy in 2029.
-IU and @Bama in 2030 certainly looks more interesting than it did when initially scheduled.
Could be kind of fun to get more teams on the schedule that we haven’t traditionally played, in locations that would help recruiting. Home and home with Texas Tech could be a good chance to get us into Texas. We’ve never played UCF, so that could be a Florida trip.
Scheduling Texas Tech would be fun, but their HC hijacked an Orange Bowl press conference to whine about ND’s conference affiliation (because that worked out so well for the last guy who tried that move).
TT also hasn’t played anyone worth a damn OOC the past couple years and has no apparent plan to do so, as they seem to be on a mission to find the lamest P4 teams they can to fulfill the Big 12 mandate (MS State, NC State, Arkansas).
How will it affect ND’s recruiting?
I think the coaching staff and results on the field have a lot more to do with recruiting than any particular opponent. We can still play west coast teams for visibility. UCLA, Washington, Oregon and the new PAC 12 schools.
It’s hilarious that the incompetence and corruption of the CFP committee (and the conferences, tbh) is all explained away by “head to head” and “ND needs to join a conference.”
Alabama had 3 losses, so apparently head-to-head matters, but records don’t.
Miami lost to SMU (who lost to Cal) and Louisville. It’s just a shame that ND didn’t play SMU or Louisville this year and beat them. Then what? How would head-to-head have worked out? CFP committee would have projectile vomited on each other.
CFP Comm: “Head-to-head didn’t matter until the two teams were next to each other in the rankings……rankings which were at all times under our complete control” Ooooookaaayyy
The SEC had a conference championship involving a team that was rated 5th best in the SEC by the CFP committee prior to and after the championship game. But instead of ousting Bama and essentially punishing the conference for whatever stupidity led to that result, the CFP Comm takes the position of “how do you give playoff spots to OK, Ole Miss, and A&M, who DIDN’T play in the championship and not Bama who did?” The CFP Comm jousting with demons of its own creation.
The ACC is so incompetent that it developed a system that produced a 5 loss ACC champ and needed the CFP committee to save its ass so it didn’t get left out of the playoff entirely.
So the CFP Comm screws ND and rewards two conferences (and Miami and Bama in the process) that couldn’t get their shit together enough to produce championship games that made any sense given the available teams within those conferences, and the entire sporting world turns around and yells at ND: It’s your fault! Join a conference would ya!!
I agree with literally every word of this except that it strikes me as an argument in favor of joining a conference. If they’re going to transparently screw us as much as they did this year, I don’t particularly trust them any other year. The one time they could have reasonably jammed it to us and didn’t was the year we were in the ACC. I wouldn’t anticipate us getting the benefit of the doubt again as an independent.
The counter to this is this year was a fluke and needed everything to break just wrong, perhaps up to and including Duke winning the ACC with 5 losses. OK, fine, but it did, and the second- or third-best ND team this century (who was the fourth betting favorite half an hour before the rankings came out) has no chance of a natty in a 12-team playoff. That totally sucks! I think it makes sense to try to minimize the chance of something like that happening again in the future.
Oddly enough, I totally agree with you. I don’t want them to join a conference, so I’m open to all arguments as to how they can avoid it and continue to stick it to everyone, but I’m not sure it makes sense not to anymore. Even Swarbrick admitted that if independence became a real obstacle to the CFP, he’d have to reconsider. Like you said, I don’t know how this year didn’t prove that it has become that. You pointed out: a bunch of disingenuous idiots are attacking ND based on BS arguments. But that’s essentially all of college football at this point. Maybe you just can’t fight city hall anymore.
This is one of those situations where the conferences want to have their cake and eat it to. Especially the SEC. SEC Championship game for $$’s. All the winning SEC teams in the CFP for $$’s. No ding to SEC championship loser (why play the game? oh yeah, $$’s). I get that the SEC has been dominant in the modern era, however if Nick Saban wasn’t at ‘bama, would that have been the case? I think with NIL, transfer portal and immediate eligibility, the landscape is changing. When the doormat of the SEC (Sorry Clark Lea) goes 10-2, this doesn’t mean that your conference is getting stronger, it means parity is coming. The argument for a 10-3 SEC team to be in the CFP isn’t valid any more (if it ever was). The more beatdowns the SEC takes, the quicker we can get back to sanity.
If for some reason, sanity never returns, ND still shouldn’t join a conference. We made it through being rejected from a conference, we can make it through not joining a conference again.
I wonder if we had joined the SEC back when the craziness began, could we have used our relationship with USC to push USC/Oregon/UCLA/UW to join the SEC too? Then we would have the super league and the B1G would be on the same level as the ACC, essentially forcing them to collapse at some point.
It probably wouldn’t have worked out that way, but fun to think about the B1G collapsing.
Off topic, but I commented on ISD (my first ever) re: Jamie U’s well thought out diatribe concerning the USC disgraceful flight from combat.
Jamie answered:
Merci to you for the kind words and shoutout to my guys over at 18stripes. I used to contribute there with them when they were still at OFD. Great dudes
To this topic, Lincoln Riley makes you think of Orlando Bloom crawling away from Menelaus in Troy, doesn’t it?