The USC-Notre Dame rivalry is finally back on the calendar, but getting there took more than two years of back-and-forth before the schools landed on a four-year agreement that runs from 2030 through 2033.
The deal announced Aug. 3 puts the Jeweled Shillelagh series back in motion on Aug. 31, 2030, in Week 1 of the college football season. For the first two years of the agreement, the matchup will open the season in Week 1. In the final two seasons, it will be played within the first three weeks.
The home sites are already set. USC will host the 2030 and 2032 games at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, while Notre Dame will welcome the Trojans in 2031 and 2033 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana.
USC’s move from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten set off the uncertainty. The Trojans announced that change in June 2022, and by the time they officially entered the Big Ten in August 2024, the schedule squeeze had become a real problem for keeping the rivalry alive. USC was dealing with a nine-game conference slate and had already been trying to avoid non-conference games from late September through the rest of the season.
At one point, USC even pushed the idea of a Week 0 meeting because of the way its schedule is built. That approach clashed with Notre Dame’s preference to preserve the traditional windows for the series, either the third Saturday of October in South Bend or the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Los Angeles.
Notre Dame’s independence gave it more flexibility, but it also meant every opponent had to be locked in through a separate agreement. Limiting the game to the opening stretch of the season was a major sticking point, and it was one of the reasons the Irish turned down USC’s earlier offers.
Still, both sides kept saying they wanted the rivalry to continue. Lincoln Riley and athletic director Jennifer Cohen were committed to finding a way, even as the new Big Ten reality made the scheduling math tougher. USC’s concern was that a late-season loss to Notre Dame could damage its standing with College Football Playoff voters.
That concern was sharpened by a development around Notre Dame’s playoff path. The CFP selection committee had already guaranteed the Irish an automatic playoff berth if they finished inside the top 12 during the 2026 season as an independent team. USC officials reportedly were not aware of that guarantee at first, but once they learned of it, they viewed it as a “material advantage” for Notre Dame, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Marcus Freeman had also made his position clear well before the agreement was reached. In May 2025, he spoke openly about wanting the series to continue.
“It’s pretty black and white for me. … I want to play them every single year,” Freeman said to reporters last year.
“When? I don’t care.
I don’t care when we play them: Start of the season, middle of the season, end of the season. I don’t care.”
By December 2025, though, the two schools were still stuck. Less than a few hours after Notre Dame rejected the final proposal, it accepted a two-year deal with BYU for 2026 and 2027, which pushed the USC series into limbo.
“We took Notre Dame at their word that they would play us anytime and anywhere. That proposal was rejected,” Riley said in an interview before the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 29.
Negotiations did not restart until partway through 2026, but they eventually led to the agreement announced in early August. USC got what it had been seeking: a Notre Dame game in the first part of the season, before conference play begins.
That matters because Notre Dame, though not a Power Four school, is still treated like one. Having that kind of opponent early in the year gives USC a marquee matchup before the Big Ten grind starts. And even though Cohen wanted USC to land a Power Four nonconference opponent for 2026 and did not get that result, a four-year series with a program of Notre Dame’s stature should still carry real value for the Trojans.
USC will open its 2026 season at home on Aug. 29 at noon against San Jose State University in a rare Week 0 game.
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