USC is Notre Dame’s biggest rival, but I don’t think it’s the most hated. In day-to-day life, most Notre Dame people don’t come into contact with USC people. USC might be loathsome, but it’s less present, and it’s hard to be more loathsome than the University of Michigan, the most compelling argument humanity has created in support of the position that Satan exists (tellingly, Notre Dame and USC can always agree to play one another). Rivalries, though, ebb and flow. And we may be on the verge of Notre Dame vs. USC surging once again.
It’s been five years since Notre Dame vs. USC held much weight in an individual season. That year was 2017, the game was in the mid-October slot in South Bend, Notre Dame came in having only lost to Georgia, USC came in having only lost to Mike Leach’s Washington State. Josh Adams spent the night running all over the Trojans, collecting nearly two hundred yards as the Irish led 28-0 at the half and 49-14 when the final whistle blew. It wasn’t a death blow for USC. It wasn’t anything close. But while the Trojans won eleven games that season, they would only make bowls in half of the next four years, their best season a 5-1 effort in 2020 that ended with a Pac-12 Championship loss to Oregon.
Now, USC is on the rise, holding questionable credentials but ten wins nonetheless. Win this one, then win next weekend against the Ducks (or the Utes, or the Huskies), and Lincoln Riley is likely back in the playoff, into the playoff in his first year at the helm in Los Angeles, into the playoff with a brand new kind of college football team, one assembled via the transfer portal and more or less the transfer portal alone. The Trojans have rarely been impressive this year, but they’ve won a lot of games. The Irish have been spotty, inconsistent, sometimes a solid top-ten team and sometimes capable of losing to anyone with a pulse. It’s a strange script, but the end result is that Notre Dame has a chance to play spoiler, and a chance to assert their recent big-brother status over their long-time rival, even in what’s a down year in South Bend and an up year in South LA.
That potential reassertion is a big deal for Notre Dame, who over the Brian Kelly era rose from the ranks of Nebraska (then) or Texas (now) to a place on the college football podium, a space not prominently upon it but close. Alabama is a better program than Notre Dame. Georgia is a better program than Notre Dame. LSU is a better program than Notre Dame. Auburn is always potentially a step away, but is a thorough mess right now. Ohio State is a better program, and Michigan might be, but that’s up in the air and depends in part on how their game against one another today turns out. Clemson has vanquished itself into Notre Dame’s sphere. Oklahoma was never really above Notre Dame on the playground. There are really just four schools who definitively hold the edge over the Irish these days in terms of capacity to win a national title. Notre Dame is close.
The hard thing about this, as USC can attest, is that it’s difficult to stay close. It’s difficult to stay at the top, but it’s almost harder to continue to be simply “close.” Unless you play in a noncompetitive conference, like the Big 12 long was relative to Oklahoma and the ACC currently is relative to anyone respectable, making the playoff is tough, and two bad days—against, say, Marshall and Stanford—can change the entire shape of a season. Notre Dame doesn’t have a playoff spot to play for tonight, and it probably won’t even have a New Year’s Six bowl position on the table by the time kickoff rolls around. But it has an angle to ten wins, and importantly, it has an angle at keeping USC firmly behind it in the pecking order. Lose, and USC is more believably on the ascent. Win, and the Trojans can do just about anything from here, but they’re still behind Notre Dame.
So, as so many college football games are, tonight is a national measuring stick. For both sides, but on the scarier, hopefully-not-descending path, for Notre Dame. College football’s power structure is determined on the field, in a handful of key matchups a year. This is not the SEC Championship, or Ohio State vs. Michigan. But this year, it’s close. For the first time in quite a while.
