On Friday night, Notre Dame defeated Penn State 27-24 in a College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Orange Bowl. With the win, the Irish advanced to next week’s national championship game against either Ohio State or Texas. USC fans can’t stand seeing their hated rivals come within one win of a national title. To make matters worse, the Trojans have not been a factor in the title race the past two seasons. After going 8-5 in 2023, the Trojans finished 7-6 in 2024. Both seasons ended with USC playing in a second-tier bowl game. USC’s Lincoln Riley was hired at the same time as Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman. However, the two have taken opposite trajectories at their respective jobs.
In their first season in 2022, USC had an 11-1 regular season and earned a trip to the Pac-12 Championship Game. Had the Trojans won that game, they almost certainly would have advanced to the College Football Playoff. Notre Dame, meanwhile, went 9-4 that year, including embarrassing home losses to Marshall and Stanford.
In 2023, however, USC fell to 8-5, while Notre Dame improved to 10-3—including a 48-20 thrashing of the Trojans in South Bend. This year, Notre Dame is 14-1 and on their way to Atlanta for the title game, while USC went 7-6 and finished the year in the Las Vegas Bowl.
Obviously, the situations that they inherited were quite different. But three years into their respective tenures, Freeman’s Notre Dame has gotten better each season, while Riley’s USC has gotten worse. For USC fans, that is simply unacceptable.
