Lincoln Riley reveals latest take on ND-USC rivalry: 'My loyalty is not to Notre Dame'

On Thursday at Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas, USC head coach Lincoln Riley expressed his support for continuing the Notre Dame-Southern Cal rivalry. But he did so with significant qualifiers.

Riley is, in concept, in favor of the Irish and Trojans battling every season. But in reality?

“When I decided, at my house, to take the USC job, my first thought was, ‘I get to coach in USC-Notre Dame,’ Riley said. “That’s the first thought. Before coach, player, any of that, as a fan. The rivalry, all these rivalries, mean a great deal to me. They mean a great deal to anybody that cares about college football. Yes.

“Do I want to play the game? Hell yeah, I wanna play the game. Absolutely. It’s one of the reasons I came here.”

However, Riley is one of the leading voices at USC who are pushing to consider ending college football’s greatest intersectional rivalry. His position on the matter has not changed.

“My allegiance and my loyalty is not to Notre Dame,” Riley said. “It’s not to anybody else. I’m the head football coach at USC, and I’m gonna back USC and I’m gonna do everything possible that I can, in my power, to make USC as good as it can. I’m not gonna let anything stand in between that.”

Riley’s hesitancy regarding extending the rivalry — whose current deal expires after this season’s October clash at Notre Dame Stadium — remains the same as it has been all offseason. He is concerned about its impact on USC’s ability to make the College Football Playoff, given the difficulty of facing Notre Dame in addition to a nine-game Big Ten schedule.

Notre Dame has reportedly declined Southern Cal’s offer of a one-year extension (to be played in Los Angeles in 2026) and favors a long-term agreement. USC, with Riley at the helm, does not want to commit to the series until it knows what the CFP format will look like moving forward, with changes still being negotiated for the 2026 playoff and beyond.

Riley made it quite clear which format he prefers: one in which the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference are granted several automatic qualifiers.

“I think it’s a million reasons why we should very seriously as a college football community, that we should adopt the automatic qualifying in terms of the College Football Playoff,” Riley said. “And this might be the most important one, is that we give every reason for college football to preserve non-conference games that mean a lot to the history of the game and to the fanbases and the former players and everybody that’s been associated with it.”

Riley’s logic is as follows: If the top teams (the most popular model being four) in the Big Ten by conference record automatically qualify for the playoff, non-conference losses matter significantly less. He implied that college football adopting that model, on which public opinion is mixed at best, is the only scenario in which he would like the Notre Dame-USC rivalry to continue.

“Do we expand [the field]? What model do we go to? That’s certainly gonna have an impact, not only on the rivalry but what kind of year, potentially, that you would play it,” Riley said. “I’m very hopeful that we can get there and I’m very hopeful we play this game forever.”

The Irish and Trojans have butted heads 95 times throughout history, with Notre Dame holding a 50-37-5 edge. The two powerhouse programs faced off for the first time in 1926, and they’ve played every year since then except for 1943-45 (World War II) and 2020 (COVID-19).

Notre Dame had coach Marcus Freeman has said multiple times this offseason that he would like to play USC every year under any circumstances.