The slowed-down holiday news cycle received a much-needed boost on Monday with Notre Dame and USC revealing that they have failed to reach an agreement to play each other in 2026.
But for all of the hoopla surrounding the cancellation — or at least pausing — of a rivalry that dates back to the 1920s, it’s also fair to question how much the rivalry game between the Fighting Irish and Trojans still moves the needle.
As noted by LAFB Network’s Ryan Dyrud on X, the recent ratings for the annual showdown between Notre Dame and USC are hardly indicative of one of college football’s premier rivalries. Dating back to 2021, the matchup has averaged just over five million viewers across four games (Nielsen didn’t release a rating in 2024), none of which topped more than 6.43 million viewers.
To put those numbers in perspective, the rivalries between Ohio State and Michigan and Alabama and Auburn typically attract at least 10 million viewers, with the former often approaching 20 million viewers. In 2023 (the lasts year in which we have a full set of data), the Notre Dame vs. USC game ranked as the 25th-most watched game of the season with a solid but unspectacular 6.43 million viewers.
Let me be clear, the USC-Notre Dame rivalry is my favorite in all of College Sports. But for all the hoopla around the country, here are the ratings for the past 5 games:
2025: 4.64 million (avg 3 million)
2024: Nielsen numbers not released
2023: 6.43 million
2022: 6.32 million…— Ryan Dyrud (@RyanDyrudLAFB) December 23, 2025
Of course, there is context to all of this, the most obvious of which is that USC is hardly the same national power that it was under Pete Carroll in the mid-2000s. Still, the Fighting Irish and Trojans have both been ranked in three of their last five matchups. That includes this year’s primetime game in which both teams were still alive for the College Football Playoff but only drew 4.64 million viewers, good for fourth for the week behind Ole Miss-Georgia, Tennessee-Alabama and LSU-Vanderbilt.
Obviously, there’s more that goes into a rivalry than its recent TV ratings and for all of USC’s (and at times, Notre Dame’s) ups and downs over the last 20 years, these are still indisputably two of the most storied programs in college football history. But there’s clearly something about the modern matchups between the Fighting Irish and Trojans that isn’t quite clicking with viewers. After all, the Ohio State-Michigan and Alabama-Auburn have still managed to remain consistent draws in seasons in which the Wolverines and Tigers were enduring down years.
None of this is to say that college football will be better off without a Notre Dame-USC rivalry, as most would agree that it’s one of the few games that should be played on an annual basis. But now that we know that the rivalry is going on hiatus, it’s also fair to wonder how much it will actually be missed. If the TV ratings are any indication, it won’t be as much as this week’s reaction has suggested.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.