USC and UCLA shook up the college football world on Thursday with the news that the two long-time Pac 12 cornerstones were moving to the B1G conference in 2024. The move is not expected to impact the Notre Dame – USC rivalry, the longest intersectional rivalry in college football.
There are still some indirect ways that today’s seismic shift in the college football landscape can impact Notre Dame, but at least directly, the Notre Dame – USC rivalry seems safe.
For USC’s schedule, the Trojans should have a bit tougher regular-season experience in the B1G given how bad the Pax 12 has been at football for the last decade. There is not a team in the Pac 12 as strong as Ohio State every year and most of the second-tier B1G programs like Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, and Michigan State are better than a lot of the teams that USC is used to seeing in the Pac 12.
It’s unfortunate that COVID-19 forced Notre Dame and USC to take a one-year hiatus from the rivalry breaking the continuous steak it had, but it’s good to know that the rivalry is safe moving forward. Notre Dame and USC play next November 26 in Los Angeles. They’ll play once more after that before USC’s move to the B1G – an October matchup in Notre Dame Stadium in 2023.
It will be interesting to see if the bi-annual game at Notre Dame stays in mid-October as has been the tradition in the series. The tradition started as an agreement between the programs so that USC would not have to play a road game in Indiana in late November. Now that USC is moving to the B1G, road games in cold weather venues will be unavoidable. Bring on USC in Notre Dame Stadium in late November with some snow on the ground.
College sports was once great.
Now it’s just tax-free pro sports, with affiliation to the ‘university industry’.
Tom Fornelli, lifelong B10 fan, sees what’s going on in “college” football, and is equally sanguine:
“….With more changes coming by the minute — altering most of what we grew up loving about the sport — college football seems to be college football in name only these days. It’s quickly growing closer to a professional sports league than whatever our ideal of it was a few years ago…”