USC offers multi-year extension to Notre Dame, ‘hopeful’ for deal to extend rivalry series

After a public tumult on the potential end of their 100-year football rivalry, the USC has made a modified offer to Notre Dame which would extend its annual series for several years beyond this season, said the USC sports director Jennifer Cohen, in Times.

Negotiations remain underway between the two schools, but Cohen said that it was “really full of hope” that USC’s new offer, which adapts better to Notre Dame’s preference for a long -term agreement, would lead to a “very soon” agreement.

“We are trying to extend the series,” said Cohen. “This is an important series for us and for our fans and for our program, and I hope that we will have a resolution that supports it and is in the best interest of our program.”

USC leaders were previously reluctant to engage in a long -term extension of rivalry with Notre Dame, given the uncertainty of the play football playoffs and new requests for a Big Ten travel schedule. The contract between the two schools that expires, the USC initially proposed to extend the series until 2026 and to review its future beyond this on a later date.

But Notre Dame clearly indicated at the time that he preferred a long -term extension, which locked the game for the years to come. In May, discussions on the future of historical rivalry, which has been played 95 times since 1924, has visited the public like the sports director of Notre-Dame, Pete Bevacqua, suggested to illustrated sports that Trojan horses endangered the future of the series by not agreeing to extend it in the long term.

“I think Southern Cal and Notre Dame should play every year as long as university football is played,” said Bevacqua to Si, “and SC knows that this is what we feel.”

At the time, the USC hoped to clarify in the format of the university football playoffs – in particular the number of automatic qualifications that would be offered to Big Ten. But the momentum for this model has slowed considerably since then, after the managers of the Southeast Conference launched their support behind a different format with 11 current offers and five total automatic invitations.

The USC had also discussed the possibility with Notre Dame to spend the game in the first month of the season, in order to better balance its future slate of Big Ten Travel. Last season, Trojan horses lost their four trips on the Big Ten road. This season, they should play on the road four times in a six -week section, with a trip to South Bend in the middle of this glove.

Cohen told Times that the game date is currently “the biggest problem” for the USC at the negotiation table.

“It is not very typical that a P4 school travel in both directions through the country for a match without conference in mid-October,” said Cohen. “Show me who else does this and does the kind of trip we make. It is a cool tradition to play at the end of the year, but these are consecutive rivalry matches with a conference championship – and our opponent does not play in a conference championship.”

Putting the game to September could still be a collision point with Notre Dame, which is little encouraged to move the annual match to September, when he could simply choose a power opponent in hand each year that would bring a significant day of pay.

“They have much more flexibility in planning than us,” said Cohen. “We are in a more important conference that does not have the same level of capacity to protect ourselves in the way they plan for this type of game.”

The concerns about the future of rivalry date from the Big Ten media day in 2024, when the USC coach Lincoln Riley suggested that the USC “would do what is best to help us win a national championship”, even if it meant goodbye to his annual series with Notre-Dame.

The comments caused an uproar at the time. A year later, Riley would have a more optimistic tone when he thought about the value of rivalries for university football.

“All these rivalries mean a lot to me,” he said.

But the best interest in the USC, he reiterated, came first.

“Do I want to play the game?” Riley said in July. “Hell yeah, I want to play the game. Absolutely. This is one of the reasons why I came here. But also, my allegiance and my loyalty are not in Notre-Dame. It is not anyone else. I am the football coach at the USC, and I will go to USC, and I will do everything I can, in my power, to make us as well as possible.

“I will not let anything stand between the two.”