Lincoln Riley says Notre Dame broke its promise on USC rivalry game

The USC Trojans and Notre Dame Fighting Irish will not play in 2026, and USC head coach Lincoln Riley is pointing at broken promises from the Notre Dame side. At Big Ten media week, Riley said the game would be happening if "some things come true that were said," placing responsibility on the Irish for the collapse of scheduling negotiations over the Jeweled Shillelagh, a trophy game played 96 times across a century of college football.

Why a century-old rivalry is sitting out a season

The USC-Notre Dame series carries a weight most college football matchups don't. Traditionally called "the greatest intersectional rivalry in college sports," the game has survived pauses for World War II and COVID-19 and regularly draws national attention for its stadiums, uniforms, and postseason implications. Riley's comments at Big Ten media week were short but pointed: USC wants to play, and the reason the game isn't happening lands on Notre Dame's side.

The statements that define the dispute

In 2025, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said he would play USC every single year and made clear he had no preference on timing. "Start of the season, middle of the season, end of the season, I don't care," Freeman said, per Blueandgold.com. That's a statement with no scheduling condition attached.

The sticking point was USC's request to move the game to Week 0, away from its traditional late-season slot. The shift matters to the Trojans because, as the only Big Ten team carrying a major non-conference game late in the year, the placement put them at a competitive disadvantage. Notre Dame plays no conference schedule and faces no conference championship game, so the week number carries no equivalent cost.

Freeman later reversed course. Moving from the game's expected Week 12 slot to Week 0 "isn't what's best," he said. No explanation followed for why timing suddenly mattered to a program that said it didn't.

It is not the first time Freeman walked back a public statement. When Notre Dame declined a Pop-Tarts Bowl invitation, Freeman released a video saying the choice wasn't made out of anger or emotion. Players in the same video described feeling like they had "the rug pulled out from under" them.

The number behind the calendar dispute

Notre Dame sits inside the College Football Playoff selection committee's top 12, which guarantees the Irish a playoff berth under current rules. USC, meanwhile, brought in the number one recruiting class in the country. A road trip to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum against a top-15-to-20 program is a real loss risk for a team entering the season with an otherwise light schedule. Freeman said "anytime, anywhere." The 2026 schedule doesn't reflect that.