Watch Colin Cowherd of FS1’s The Herd explain why he thinks USC football should immediately sever ties with their legendary annual rivalry game with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, a beloved showdown that first began in 1926 and has been played 94 times.
Check out the segment above as Colin says Michigan started the blueprint of non-conference games not mattering towards winning a national title after the Wolverines blew through a cakewalk non-conference schedule in 2023 [East Carolina, UNLV, Bowling Green] en route to an undefeated season, and says it would be common sense for the Trojans to walk away from their rivalry with Notre Dame after having now joined an extremely loaded Big Ten alongside Oregon, Washington, and UCLA.
Colin Cowherd: “According to Saturday Down South, a college football site, Lincoln Riley and USC have been trying to get out of this year’s season opener against LSU. They’re moving into the Big Ten, have Notre Dame on the schedule, and it’s like ‘how much can we take here?’... Everyone is going to go after Lincoln Riley but it never should have been scheduled. Michigan won a national championship last year – do you know who they played in the out-of-conference? UNLV, [East Carolina], and Bowling Green; that’s how you win a national championship.
You know I’m not a sports traditionalist...I’m not interested. That doesn’t mean I don’t like history, but not with my sports, it’s ‘what’s the game on tonight?’ ESPN created a channel ‘ESPN Classic’ and nobody watched. I don’t want to watch old Rose Bowls. I’ll occasionally go to YouTube to watch highlights when someone passes that I admire like Bill Walton, but I don’t want to watch old games.
Now USC on their schedule is going to have Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, and only the best of the Pac-12 – Oregon, Washington, UCLA. I’m going to ask a question... Why do they have to keep playing Notre Dame?
‘COLIN, THE HISTORY!’... Oh, give me a break. College football punted on history last year. They disbanded the only Power-5 conference West of the Rockies and punted it into the ether.
Think about what top programs in college football now have to face... You gotta get through your conference schedule, and then if you can get through that you have a conference championship game and might have to play one of those teams again... And then we’re going to have a 12-team playoff. So you’re going to have to play four more teams potentially. You think I wanna add Notre Dame to that?? It’s actually a respectful move, we don’t wanna play Notre Dame.
USC is going to have schedules going forward where they open with Michigan, three weeks later it’s at Penn State, two weeks later they’re at Oregon, Ohio State later, they'll have to play the Buckeyes again in the conference championship, and then they may play them a third time in the playoff. No, thank you.
When you start that salty discharge coming out of your eyes talking about Notre Dame, this was a sport who punted on an entire region of the country. Longtime regional rivalries into the ether. Why is USC playing Notre Dame? All good things come to an end. You can grasp, hold, and keep pulling at history, but if I was USC I'd be like ‘nah, been there, done that.’ If Notre Dame joins the Big Ten, then we will play you.
But I got Michigan, Wisconsin, Penn State... You ever go to a Saturday night game at Penn State? Good luck USC, Penn State – 3,000 miles away, that crowd, James Franklin, and all those NFL athletes? Camp Randall on a Saturday night? Columbus? Eugene? Husky Stadium? Then I got my rival at the end of the year, then I got the conference championship, then I got the 12-team playoff?? I’m punting Notre Dame out of respect for Notre Dame.”
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