Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM FEBRUARY 2026 45 Y ou can't completely blame South- ern Cal for the decisions that killed its rivalry with Notre Dame. How- ever, you can mostly blame the Trojans, at least for now. By all accounts, Notre Dame wanted the rivalry to continue as is, with games in South Bend in mid-October and games in Los Angeles on Thanksgiving weekend. Southern Cal's position was "Week 0 or not at all." The Irish have not really provided an explanation for why they considered a Week 0 matchup un- tenable, but we do know that the Tro- jans made an offer and the Irish said no. We also know that it was the Trojans who switched its position at the last minute, balking at a two-year deal to keep the rivalry going. "The two programs were on the verge of finalizing a two-year extension of their agreement in late November, with Southern Cal agreeing to host Notre Dame next season on the traditional date after Thanksgiving and the Irish hosting in 2027," Yahoo Sports senior college football reporter Ross Dellenger wrote. "However, Southern Cal officials determined that the game date was not ideal considering past decisions from the CFP selection committee in punish- ing schools for losses, especially those late in the season." In other words, Southern Cal lost the plot. The Trojans fell victim to some fun- damental misunderstandings about the College Football Playoff, as well as itself. Let's tackle the latter first. Who does Southern Cal think it is? The Trojans have never made the CFP, and they would have made the 12-team playoff only three times in the four-team era. Most recently, head coach Lincoln Riley's first Southern Cal team started 11-1, only to blow the Pac-12 champi- onship and fall to Tulane in the Cotton Bowl. None of Riley's teams have sniffed the playoff since. Before his first year, Southern Cal's last 10-win season was 2017. College football is a "What have you done for me lately?" sport, now more than ever, and the Trojans have not done enough to act like scheduling is the reason it can't make the CFP. Now, let's deal with that quote from Dellenger's story. "The game date was not ideal considering past decisions from the CFP selection committee in punish- ing schools for losses, especially those late in the season." That is, again, a fun- damental misunderstanding of what the committee has done over the past two years. And to be fair, they're not the only school that has talked itself into that. Alabama did last year. Texas did this year. Both of them missed the point. First of all, let's agree to never live in a world where "punishing losses" is seen as a bad thing. That is, quite literally, how sports work. But all you have to do is look past the complaining and actu- ally dive into these teams' résumés to see that this isn't all that's happening. Take, for example, Southern Cal's 2025 schedule and imagine Notre Dame was replaced on its nonconference slate with State Technical College of Missouri (a real school, by the way. Go State Tech). The Trojans would have finished 10-2 … and they would have missed the CFP for the same reason Notre Dame missed the CFP. Vanderbilt, too, for that matter. You can agree or disagree with the de- cisions the committee made, but Okla- homa, Alabama and Miami made the playoff because they had quality wins over other CFP teams, while Notre Dame and Vanderbilt did not. This is also the issue with the "Well, if Miami doesn't make it over Notre Dame, then that game doesn't matter" argument: If that game wasn't played and the Hurricanes opened their season against State Tech, they wouldn't even be considered an at-large contender due to their lack of quality wins. Then there's the issue of the MOU — "Memorandum of Understand- ing," —which guarantees Notre Dame a playoff spot if it finishes in the top 12. Ryan Kartje of the Los Angeles Times reported this was why Southern Cal re- neged on the proposed continuation of the series; the Trojans became aware of that when Dellenger reported it on Selection Sunday Dec. 7. "To Southern Cal officials the agree- ment felt like 'a material advantage' to the Irish, whose place as an indepen- dent and scheduling flexibility already afforded them a considerable edge in positioning for the playoff over other programs, like Southern Cal, that are tethered to a conference," Kartje wrote. The MOU, as any rational person would acknowledge, is nonsensical. Notre Dame should have to live with the consequences of being independent, a trade-off it has been happy to accept for more than a century. But this was agreed to by the Power Four commissioners — one of whom is in charge of the Big Ten — in March 2024, and no one bothered to tell Southern Cal until December 2025? What? All of this ignores that Southern Cal has been by far the more hesitant of the two to continue the rivalry since this story first popped up this summer. Riley himself gave all sorts of excuses for why he was taking a tepid approach to the situation. "Our schedules are already going to be so good," Riley said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "At some point, you're like, all right, is the juice worth the squeeze in terms of playing these games?" If only Southern Cal played in a re- gional conference that allowed room on its schedule for one of the greatest historic rivalries in sports. The Trojans lost the plot when they blew that up, and they lost the plot now. ✦ Southern Cal Lost The Plot Staff writer Jack Soble has covered Notre Dame athletics for Blue & Gold Illustrated since August 2023. Contact him at Jack.Soble@on3.com. OFF THE DOME JACK SOBLE Notre Dame's rivalry with Southern Cal is dead until at least 2030. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER