In the fall of 2005 I was eight years old. I sat down with my father to watch his favorite team, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, take on what he called their 'arch-rival', the USC Trojans. Up until October 15, 2005, I had yet to sit and watch an entire football game from start to finish with him. I thought it was boring and I had better things to do, apparently.
Thankfully, I decided to sit with him and watch the Battle for the Jeweled Shillelagh from start to finish, and over the the 3.5 hours, I became fully invested. I watched Reggie Bush run, hurdle and juke his way through the Irish defense for 160 rushing yards and three touchdowns. I watched Tom Zbikowski return a punt 59 yards to give Notre Dame the lead 21-14. I watched Brady Quinn give Notre Dame the lead 31-28 with 1:54 left on the clock and I watched USC take the lead right back with three seconds left.
The feeling of losing to your arch-rival in the waning moments of a game is a feeling I was never going to forget, even though I had just learned what an 'arch-rival' was earlier that day. For the next 20 straight seasons, I looked forward to the matchup between the Irish and the Trojans in the fall. I always had my calendar marked and over the next 20 seasons, I witnessed some great games.
In 2012, I watched Notre Dame seal their bid to the National Championship game out west in Los Angeles on a 4th-down, goal line stand. In 2015, I watched the Irish get retribution for the absolute beatdown the Trojans gave them a year prior in the Coliseum. Once again in 2018, I watched the Irish seal their bid to the four-team College Football Playoffs with a win on the road over USC.
In 2023 I took my wife, Lauren, to see this rivalry in person for the first time. Watching the defense dismantle Heisman winner Caleb Williams, Notre Dame safety Xavier Watts' rise to stardom and Jadarian Price's kickoff return for a touchdown with her is a memory I'll cherish forever.
I watched the Irish, once again, seal a bid to the College Football playoffs out west in 2024 and I watched them this past season win in South Bend under the lights capped off by another Price kickoff return for a touchdown. I would have cherished that night much more if I knew that was going to be the last time for the foreseeable future the two would meet on the gridiron.
We're now at December of 2025 and the Notre Dame-USC rivalry officially had come to an end. A rivalry that started in 1926 and withstood the test of time was now over. These two historic programs had played every single season with the exception of a second world war (1943-1945) and a global pandemic (2020).
Unfortunately, the ground work for the demise of this rivalry started back in February of 2025. USC's athletic director Jennifer Cohen spoke about this matter in an interview with Antonio Morales of The Athletic.
"In an ideal world, we're going to keep playing each other," Cohen explained. "With that being said, the landscape has changed dramatically. We're now playing in a conference where we fly back a forth across the country every other week, and CFP expansion and how you get access to the CFP and how things are seeded and selected. Those, to me, are important, unanswered questions."
Who forced USC's hand to join a conference where they have to 'fly back and forth across the country every other week?' It wasn't Notre Dame. Matter of fact, the Irish laid the ground work with their independence to show programs who elected to join in conference realignment how to navigate a schedule where you have to 'fly back and forth across the country every other week' and still maintain a solid ranking in the CFP and make the CFP.
Let's be real about something, it also isn't Notre Dame who is keeping USC out of the playoffs. It's USC keeping USC out of the playoffs. Since 2018, the Trojans have had a realistic shot at making the playoffs once and that was in 2022, a season where they beat Notre Dame at home. They got moved up to No. 4 in the CFP rankings and all they had to do was beat Utah, in a rematch, in the Pac-12 Championship. They lost by 23 points.
In 2023, they started the season off 6-0 and traveled east to South Bend where they got beaten soundly under the lights 48-20. They still had games remaining against Utah, Cal, Washington, Oregon and UCLA to climb in the rankings and went 1-4 in those games.
Major donors and former football players from Southern Cal are also unhappy with their decision to bring this rivalry to an end. Former players like wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson are furious about the current state of the program. Back in December, he posted a video on his social media and had this to say:
"I don't know what the f*** is going on with our athletic department," Johnson exclaimed. "We got people in there that are not Trojans, that don't know anything about being a Trojan, running our athletic department. We got a head coach that knows nothing about being a Trojan. Why don't we just not play football? How bout that? We not gonna play Notre Dame again until possibly 2030 is what I'm understanding. That doesn't make any sense. I grew up on the Notre Dame-USC rivalry.
"And I'm not one to go in on the USC football coach," Johnson continued. "But if I can remember correctly, I had Lincoln Riley saying, well, I don't know if I want to play them in the future. You ain't gonna be here in the future! Especially if you keep missing the playoffs. You not gonna be here in the future, I promise you that. I don't understand what our athletic department, our administration, ok, our board of trustees, board a regents, whatever you wanna call 'em are doing."
Unfortunately, this once great historic rivalry that has given us instant classics over the last century has now resorted to a social media contest with both sides claiming 'who needs who' and 'who ran away from who.' There's a laundry list of reasons that I can write about as to why USC is the ones that ducked Notre Dame, and it's based on fact.
Maybe it's the fact that Notre Dame has won 11 of the last 15 games they've played. Maybe its the fact that USC hasn't beaten the Irish in back to back seasons in this rivalry since 2008-2009. Maybe it's the fact that Notre Dame has as many finishes in the AP Top 10 since 2018 as USC has had unranked finishes.
Maybe it's the fact that Notre Dame has had seven times as many double-digit winning seasons since 2018 than what USC has had. Maybe it's the fact that Notre Dame has made the CFP three times in the playoff era compared to USC's ZERO appearances.
The fact of the matter is that neither team 'needs' either team. The Irish have made the playoffs in years where they played and beat an unranked USC team. There's been years where Notre Dame has played and beaten a ranked USC team and they haven't made the playoffs. The same could be said for the team out west, but at the end of the day, neither team needs either team. College football needs both of these teams.
The Battle for the Jeweled Shillelagh is one of the most historic rivalries in the sport and I learned that at a very young age. It's up there with 'The Game' between Ohio State and Michigan. It's up there with the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn. I pray that this rivalry returns, and returns quickly under the proper pretenses. This was the series that ignited my love for Notre Dame and my love for college football. It's absence is robbing the future generation the experiences that I had nearly 21 years ago.
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