As long anticipate and greatly feared, Notre Dame and USC jointly announced on Monday that their rivalry is going on indefinite hiatus.
“USC and Notre Dame recognize how special our rivalry is to our fans, our teams, and college football, and our institutions will continue working towards bringing back The Battle for the Jeweled Shillelagh. The rivalry between our two schools is one of the best in all of sport, and we look forward to meeting again in the future," the Trojans and Fighting Irish said in a statement.
Notre Dame and USC have met on an annual basis (barring a world war or global pandemic) since their initial meeting back in 1926. The schools would meet in October in South Bend in odd-numbered years and in Los Angeles in late November in even-numbered years. Paired with their series (I won't call it a rivalry) with Stanford, this arrangement allowed Notre Dame to spend each Thanksgiving weekend in California, which got them out of frigid South Bend and into more mild temperatures and in front of important recruits and donors.
"Where I feel about USC is very clear," Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman told FootballScoop back in May, when it was clear this near century-old rivalry was on life support. "We would love to play them every single year. It doesn't matter when we play them. I would love to continue the rivalry as long as I'm the head coach here. I think rivalries are great for college football, and I think they're great for sports because that's the one game of year you throw out records, you throw out (everything). And I've been a part of some of the greatest rivalries that there's been."
USC began having second thoughts about playing Notre Dame once it joined the Big Ten in 2024. The Trojans had played nine conference games for more than a decade in the Pac-12, but their new arrangement already required a handful of trips to the Midwest (or further) each year.
Sources tell FootballScoop that USC wants to play the game earlier in the schedule and Notre Dame would be willing if/when it can work it out contractually with multiple games already under contract. Texas has publicly questioned whether it will follow through with its planned home-and-home with Notre Dame in 2028-29 after it felt it was not properly rewarded for opening this season at Ohio State; if the Longhorns cancel (Sept. 9, 2028 in Austin; Sept. 22, 2029 in South Bend) perhaps the Trojans can slide into the void on the Irish's schedule.
"I think there's a million reasons why we should very seriously, as a college football community, that we should adopt the automatic qualifying in terms of the College Football Playoff," USC head coach Lincoln Riley said during Big Ten media days. "This might be the most important one, right, is that we give every reason for college football to preserve nonconference games that mean a lot to the history of the game and to the fan bases and the former players and everybody that's been associated with it."
Notre Dame heads into the indefinite hiatus with a 51-37-5 lead, having won three in a row and seven of the last eight.
The move could force Notre Dame to continue to ask what it receives out of its half-in, half-out relationship with the ACC. In addition to losing the USC game, Notre Dame has also seen historic rivalries with Michigan (a mostly-annual game from 1978 to 2019) and Michigan State (an annual game from 1948 to 2017) mostly fall by the wayside. Moving forward, the only annual games Notre Dame still has on the schedule are Navy, Purdue and Stanford (and that one isn't under contract beyond 2026). While the Midshipmen, Boilermakers and Cardinal offer Notre Dame fans familiarity, they don't do much to help the Irish's strength of schedule. Moving forward, Notre Dame will play Clemson -- eight all-time meetings -- annually from 2027 through 2038.
Monday's news was paired with an announcement that Notre Dame will play BYU in Provo in 2026 and in South Bend in 2027. That announcement rounds out the Irish's 2026 schedule, they will play Rice, Michigan State, Miami, Boston College, SMU and Stanford at Notre Dame Stadium, Purdue, North Carolina, Syracuse and BYU on the road, and neutral site games with Wisconsin (Lambeau Field) and Navy (Foxborough, Mass.). USC will need to arrange a game with a Power 4 opponent to round out its non-conference schedule; presently, the Trojans only have home games with Fresno State and Louisiana on the slate.