Perhaps the worst part of this new age of college football is the death to rivalries across the country. The tragedies began with conference realignment 15 years ago, and the big move by Nebraska to the Big 10, and it continues because of what the college football playoff has become. Notre Dame isn’t completely innocent in all of this, but they have also been victimized by it as well.
Nothing could scream tragedy louder than USC running away from playing Notre Dame because — well they’re just plain cowards. The Greatest Intersectional Rivalry in sports was put in a trash can after the 2025 season, and it has many fans from both schools pretty angry and upset about it all.
All college football playoff stuff beside, the loss of USC on the schedule just makes it less interesting. With Southern Cal, there was a rival that you wanted to see buried 8 feet in the ground below; and regardless of records, rankings, and repercussions — it was a red circle game.
After the news of USC broke, the news of Notre Dame replacing USC on the 2026 schedule with the BYU Cougars broke as well. While this was a nice replacement for 2026, it wasn’t a long term type of solution for the type of game USC was for the Irish.
Enter the Clemson Tigers.
Clemson has long been a team myself and others have pushed as a new rival for Notre Dame. We’ve talked about it numerous times on the podcast. All good rivalries have a starting point of sorts, and for the Irish and Clemson, it started in 2015 in the infamous BYOG Game. The game was the catalyst for Clemson’s title run, and for several years — Clemson was the team Notre Dame was trying to emulate. The Irish are just 2-4 against the Tigers since that 2015 game, with two of those losses coming in the ACC Championship Game and the Cotton Bowl as part of the CFP.
It’s a small, but incredibly promising start to a great rivalry game for the future. Hell — we even have a trophy concept (which maybe you laugh at but Pete Bevacqua joked about a trophy too — it ight as well be this one).
We even have one coach that can’t keep the other school out of his mouth. Dabo Swinney always uses a lot of words, and he made sure to bring up Notre Dame and their money machine in the backyard during a recent interview.
Every bit of what you just read is important and helps make a rivalry, but the biggest part will always be consistent scheduling. Literally one year ago today, Notre Dame and Clemson announced a historic 12 year scheduling agreement from 2027-2038. As it stands right now, Clemson is the ONLY team on Notre Dame’s 2038 schedule.
So yeah… screw USC.
Notre Dame vs Clemson has all of the potential to turn into something truly great, and as a Notre Dame fan, we really need it to be to help spice up schedule with animosity and hate as we move forward. There is still plenty of uncertainty about what. the future holds for college football, but birthing a new and heated rivalry is something we can all get behind. Right?
