Among the biggest rivalries in all of sports, the USC Notre Dame rivalry features some of the most memorable moments of college football. The rivalry between the University of Notre Dame located in South Bend, Indiana and the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, California features two of the most elite football programs in existence. A testament to their dominance, both teams have won 11 National Championships, the most any program has won. The USC Notre Dame rivalry has produced seven Heisman Trophy winners. In addition to he most combined national titles and Heisman Trophy winners, the two schools have the most All-Americans, College Football Hall of Famers and eventual NFL Hall of Famers. This is one of the great rivalries in sports and when you get USC Notre Dame tickets you are definitely seeing some of the best athletes in the country.

The USC Notre Dame rivalry, often called the greatest intersectional rivalry in college football, began in 1926, and ever since the winner of the Notre Dame USC game has a great chance of playing for the National Title. So popular are there games that they represent five of the ten most-watched college footballs games on TV all time. The winner of the Notre Dame USC game gets the Jeweled Shillelagh, along with bragging rights and usually a great shot at one of the major bowl games, if not the BCS Championship game.

Historically Notre Dame has won more, but in recent years USC has dominated the Irish. In addition to playing for the National Championship, The USC Notre Dame Game also has a tradition of the opponent playing spoiler for the other team’s championship aspirations. The Irish spoiled Trojan title campaigns by giving them their first loss in the last game of the season in 1947 and 1952, as well as handing them a first loss in 1927, 1973 and 1995. But USC has done the same thing plenty of times, spoiling legitimate Irish title hopes in 1938, 1964, 1970, 1980 and tying them in 1948.
USC also spoiled Irish campaigns in 1931 and 1971.

According to legend, the USC Notre Dame game was a result of a “conversation between wives” that escalated into the team’s first games, which eventually would grow into one of the fiercest rivalries in all of sports. Legend has it that Notre Dame’s Head Coach Knute Rockne’s wife and USC’s athletic director’s Gywnn Wilson wife are responsible for the birth of the rivalry. USC was looking for a national rival to beef up its program and get more national exposure for the West Coast team. Gwynn and his wife went to USC Thanksgiving Day game against Nebraska where he spoke with Rockne. Rockne was against the game because the long travel would be tough for the teams involved, especially because there would be two games each college football season. However, Gywnn’s wife was able to persuade Rockne’s by appealing to California’s weather. She pointed out the fact that the wether in sunny California is a bit more pleasant than Nebraska’s cold winters, and with Rockne’s wife on board, it only took a few days to convince Knute. And that is how the USC Notre Dame rivalry came to be!

Most college football traditionalist point to this as the origin of the the Notre Dame USC game, but college football historian Murray Sperber has another theory. His story focuses on the fact that Notre Dame was seeking new opponents in the 1920s as the schools football program grew in prestige. Notre Dame, and independent school, was banned from playing school in the Western Conference, then called the Big Ten, but still was able to beat the best in college football, including then-great Army and Yale. With the increase in popularity of Notre Dame, more schools were eager to play the school. Members on the Rose Bowl committee invited Notre Dame to play in the 1924 football season, and with Notre Dame eager to expand its reach nationally, earn pay outs from travel, and please the requests of alumni, Sperber belives this is the true story of the birth of the USC Notre Dame rivalry.

The first Notre Dame USC game took place in 1926 in Los Angeles, with the Irish winning a 13-12 thriller, and Rockne is said to have called the game the greatest he ever saw. The second game of the USC Notre Dame rivalry was even closer, with the Irish again winning, this time 7-6 in Chicago’s Soldier Field, a game that was one of the highest attended games in college football history with approximately 120,000 watching the game. As a testament to these elite programs, the two teams combined for all the National Titles from 1928-1932

Notable games in the Notre Dame USC Rivalry

• 1929 – Notre Dame 13, USC 12, the largest verified attendance of any college football game
• 1930 – Notre Dame 27, USC 0 the last regular-season game of Knute’s career, and year in which the Irish would win the National Title.
• 1931 – USC 16, Notre Dame 14, a game that was won in the final minute, after Johnny Baker’s 33-yard field goal. This was the first time USC won in Indiana and also broke Notre Dame’s unbeaten streak of 26 games in a row.
• 1948 – USC 14, Notre Dame 14 – another game in which the Trojans broke an unbeaten streak, this time 21 games
• 1954 – Notre Dame 23, USC 17 Notre Dame takes the lead with a 72-yard pass
• 1963 – Notre Dame 17, USC 14, a game Notre Dame won with a field goal to beat the defending-champion Trojans.
• 1970 – USC 38, Notre Dame 28, game in which Notre Dame’s Joe Theismann set a still-standing school record for Notre Dame with 526 passing yards in a single game, and this was a game played in torrential downpour
• 1974 – USC 55, Notre Dame 24 called “The Comeback” because USC was able to come back from 42 back, scoring 35 points in the third quarter
• 2007 – USC 38, Notre Dame 0 – The largest margin of victory in a USC Notre Dame game and the first shutout since 1998.

Other USC Notre Dame links:

• USC: Who is our Rival?
• The Shillelagh
• USC – Notre Dame…A Real Rivalry