From train rides to Reggie Bush: The best games in the USC-Notre Dame rivalry

It's not truly an overstatement to accidental that the Notre Dame-USC rivalry nationalized football. Sure, we already had plentifulness of heated rivalries erstwhile the 2 schools began playing each different successful the mid-1920s, but rivals were neighbors. Harvard vs. Yale. Auburn vs. Georgia. Michigan vs. Ohio State. Missouri vs. Kansas. Notre Dame-USC, connected the different hand, required galore days connected a bid astatine first; it dropped teams disconnected successful a wholly antithetic portion of the world, wherever they usually had to bushed 1 of the champion teams connected the planet. It is the Granddaddy of intersectional rivalries (with apologies to Keith Jackson), and it was a monolithic crippled close from its origin.

On Saturday evening successful South Bend, the Trojans and Fighting Irish volition conscionable for the 96th time. Notre Dame holds a 52-38-5 edge, though the momentum has swayed backmost and distant beauteous severely done the years -- Notre Dame went 15-3-1 from 1940-61, USC went 12-2-2 from 1967-82, Notre Dame went 12-0-1 from 1983-95, USC went 11-3 from 1996-2009. The Irish person won 9 of the past 12 and are favored to marque it 10 successful 13 this year.

There is simply a feeling of foreboding surrounding this game, however, arsenic determination aren't immoderate much Trojans-Irish games scheduled moving forward. The lone clip these rivals haven't met since their archetypal crippled successful 1926 was due to the fact that of either warfare (1943-45) oregon a pandemic (2020), but the bid is present successful information due to the fact that of ... good ... I don't truly know, actually.

Notre Dame caput manager Marcus Freeman has surely said helium and the schoolhouse want the bid to continue, and USC caput manager Lincoln Riley said, "Do I privation to play the game? Hell yeah, I privation to play the game," astatine Big Ten media days successful July, too, earlier equivocating. "My allegiance is to USC, and I'm going to bash everything successful my powerfulness to assistance USC."

That led to a sidebar astir the request for conferences to get aggregate automatic bids into a recently expanded College Football Playoff, arsenic the Big Ten has been pushing for months. "I deliberation there's a cardinal reasons wherefore we should ... follow the automatic qualifying successful presumption of the College Football Playoff," Riley said. "This mightiness beryllium the astir important one, right, is that we springiness each crushed for assemblage shot to sphere nonconference games that mean a batch to the past of the crippled and to the instrumentality bases and the erstwhile players and everybody that's been associated with it."

Apparently USC and/or the Big Ten deliberation the lone mode the USC-Notre Dame bid tin proceed is if it has nary interaction connected who makes the CFP? If the bid ends, it volition extremity for utterly embarrassing reasons. Just docket the damn crippled and support playing it.

For the past century, this has been 1 of the sport's defining rivalries, some due to the fact that of its interaction connected assemblage football's equilibrium of powerfulness (especially successful the 1960s and 1970s) and the unbelievable moments it has produced.

Here are 10 games that person helped to specify an incredible, and ridiculously endangered, rivalry.

1931: USC 16, Notre Dame 14

The 1920s were the decennary successful which the athletics afloat infected America. The Big Ten and Ivy League remained awesome astatine it, and the Rose Bowl lone gained successful gravitas erstwhile the Rose Bowl stadium opened successful 1922. But schools from everyplace progressively wanted a portion of the action. Alabama won the 1926 Rose Bowl, proving that the South could much than clasp its own, and with its 1925 Rose Bowl trouncing of Pop Warner's Stanford, Knute Rockne's Notre Dame announced itself arsenic a nationalist power.

USC had already won the Rose Bowl successful 1923, but the Trojans' notoriety arsenic an up-and-comer deed hyperdrive when, having attempted to pluck Rockne distant from Notre Dame successful 1925, they agreed to commercialized yearly cross-country trips with the Irish. Three of the archetypal 4 games successful the series, alternating betwixt tremendous crowds successful Chicago and Los Angeles, resulted successful one-point Notre Dame wins, each with gut-wrenching missed kicks involved. The state was hooked.

Notre Dame welcomed USC to South Bend for the archetypal clip successful 1931 -- and for the archetypal clip without Rockne, who had died successful a level clang the erstwhile March. The Irish hadn't mislaid a crippled since a decision to the Trojans to extremity the 1928 season, and they took a 14-0 pb heading into the 4th quarter. Gus Shaver scored to marque it 14-6 aboriginal successful the fo...