The Notre Dame - USC rivalry doesn’t officially restart until 2030, but Lincoln Riley is making sure there are plenty of hard feelings in the lead-up to the restart. Instead of being the bigger man and simply looking like the victor in this fight, he couldn’t help but take a petty shot at the Fighting Irish once news broke of the series’ revival.
“We felt like the best thing for our program was to play this game early in the season,” Riley said, via Kendell Hollowell. “We’re a part of a conference, we have a conference schedule to answer to. We don’t make our own schedule.”
The shot here is pretty obvious. The Trojans have the Big Ten schedule to reckon with, and that’s why they didn’t want to play a game against Notre Dame in the middle of the season, as has been the case for years. It’s long been known that the Irish didn’t want an early-season matchup, but it appears they gave in to that to restart things at the soonest possible opportunity. Riley seemingly got exactly what he wanted, so why did he need to take that extra shot about being part of a conference?
It’s not even close to the first time the USC coach has taken a shot at Notre Dame when he was asked during Big Ten Media Days about the possibility of this game coming back anytime soon.
Lincoln Riley's Notre Dame comment says more than he may have intended
“We want to play the game. I want to play the game. We would be playing the game had some things come true that were said.”
In the last five days, Riley has hinted Notre Dame is full of liars who don’t understand how scheduling works. Needless to say, when the two schools do face off against one another, if Marcus Freeman and Riley are still both on the sidelines, there won’t be any love lost.
To be fair to the Trojans’ coach, he’s taken quite a bit of heat over the last few years as he hemmed and hawed about whether he wanted to continue playing the Irish. More than a few comments made it appear he was perfectly fine if his school decided to walk away from it.
While saying all the right things, including at Big Ten Media Days about wanting to play, his comments often came off as insincere. It’s still not a given that he really wanted to play the game. There was a lot of pressure from the USC side to restart the rivalry this spring. Some of his potshots at the Golden Domers may be housed in resentment.
The Trojans have talked quite a bit about how difficult a Power 4 non-conference opponent is to have on the slate with an already difficult Big Ten schedule.
Yes, Notre Dame gave way and is allowing the 2030 and 2031 contests to be in Week 1, with the 2032 and 2033 contests in the first three weeks. However, considering how lopsided the rivalry has been in recent years, Marcus Freeman and the Fighting Irish will take some verbal shots, but can do their talking with more wins over Lincoln Riley and Co.
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