Notre Dame–USC Football Rivalry Will Return: ‘That’s the Way It Should Be’

The series will resume in 2030 and retain its traditional home-and-home format, but there will be a major schedule change.

The Notre Dame vs. USC football rivalry will return after a brief hiatus. | USA TODAY Sports

Righting an egregious wrong, ancient rivals Notre Dame and USC announced the resumption of their football series with the addition of four early season games from 2030 to ’34. Notre Dame and USC will not play from this season through ’29, interrupting an intersectional blueblood rivalry that dates back a century.

The new agreement calls for the series to move to the Saturday of Labor Day weekend the first two years—in Los Angeles on Aug. 31, 2030, and in South Bend on Aug. 30, 2031. The ’32 and ’33 games will be played in the first three weeks of the season, before USC begins Big Ten Conference play. That change, from the traditional USC home game at the end of the season and Notre Dame home game in mid-October, was at the request of the Trojans, who did not want additional midseason travel after joining the Big Ten. 

“I think it’s great for Notre Dame, great for USC and great for college football,” Fighting Irish athletic director Pete Bevacqua says of the series resumption.

The series will retain its traditional home-and-home format. Games will not be played at neutral sites. 

“We want to play USC in Notre Dame Stadium and they want to play us in L.A. Memorial Coliseum,” Bevacqua says. “And frankly, that’s the way it should be.”

The 2030 game will be played on a date when Notre Dame had been scheduled to face Indiana in the first game of a two-game series. Sources tell Sports Illustrated that the series between the Fighting Irish and Hoosiers has been canceled at Indiana’s request.

Negotiations between USC and Notre Dame to continue their historic series broke down last year. Notre Dame filled the gap on its schedule with a two-year, home-and-home series with BYU this year and next year. USC has nonconference games this season against San José State, Fresno State and Louisiana, with 2027 nonconference games against Nevada and UNLV and a ’28 game against Fresno State.

Notre Dame and USC have met 96 times, starting in 1926. Notre Dame leads the series 53-38-5, with the Irish having won the last three and seven of the last eight. Current Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman is 3–1 in the series, while USC’s Lincoln Riley is 1–3.

Both coaches might have their best teams at their respective schools this season, but the only potential meeting would come in the College Football Playoff or a non-CFP bowl game.

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