You can't buy hatred: College football rivalries are the last stand in a profit-driven hellscape

Rivalries are the lifeblood of college football. In these times when money talks louder than tradition, they're the last relics of when emotion ruled the sport. And despite all the odds, they're standing strong, like the Roman Colosseum. Worse for wear, sure, but still awe-inspiring. The college football power brokers get to decide whether they're willing to protect rivalries the way UNESCO protects the World Heritage Sites. But college football fans have more power than they think — if they choose to wield it.

Want more rivalries? Explore FanSided’s Rivalry Week Hub, our interactive deep dive into the traditions, history and moments that define college football’s fiercest matchups.

Rivalries are the last thing college football can’t afford to lose

Unfortunately, we can't expect UNESCO to create a list protecting College Football Heritage. Today, college football's intricate stonework is crumbling. Tradition can't compete with the promise of a payout. Bowl games are a pale shadow of what they used to be. Teams on the Pacific Coast are members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Big Ten has 18 teams. The Big 12 has 16. Players can, and do, suit up for four schools in four years.

Much has changed, but some things remain constant: Ohio State still covers up all the Ms on campus when it's time to play Michigan. Army and Navy still exchange "prisoners." USC still wraps the statue of Tommy Trojan in a mile of duct tape to protect it from UCLA students.

These and many other traditions make rivalries what they are. Hatred breeds customs that span the spectrum of silly to insane. Some rituals make about as much sense as Notre Dame facing off with USC for the last 100 years. Schools separated by more than 2,000 miles with no religious, academic, conference or regional affiliations have inspired a century of hatred played out on a football field. It's glorious madness. And we might not get more of it...

The threat to the USC-Notre Dame rivalry

USC and Notre Dame don't have an agreement to play in 2026 or beyond. The Fighting Irish beat the Trojans in South Bend this year, 34-24. Unless the two sides come together in the next few months, it'll be the last meeting for the foreseeable future. Why? It depends on who you ask.

The Trojans say they want the rivalry to continue, but also want the game moved to the beginning of the season. They don't want to be the only Big Ten team playing a non-conference road game after Week 4, citing the wear-and-tear of the season and the disruption to the conference slate. Those are hurdles toward securing a College Football Playoff bid after all.

The Irish say they want the rivalry to continue, but they don't see a reason to cave to USC's demand to move the game. They already did the Trojans a favor decades ago by allowing the South Bend trip to take place in the fairer weather of October. Why fix what isn't broken? Especially when they may find it more difficult to fill October and November slots on their schedule.

Both sides will claim they have the leverage. Both sides are effectively playing chicken with one of the most storied and unique rivalries in sports.

How to kill a rivalry

If the USC-Notre Dame rivalry dies, it will be one of the biggest to fall in CFB history. But it won't be the first. The No. 1 cause of death for rivalries is conference realignment.

Nebraska's decision to leave the Big 12 for the Big Ten in 2011 broke their longstanding grudge match with Oklahoma. The next year, Texas A&M and Missouri left for the SEC, abandoning the Lone Star Showdown with Texas and the Border War with Kansas. In 2024, Oregon and Washington prioritized their regional rivalry when moving to the Big Ten, but cut off local in-state rivals Oregon State and Washington State in the process. Oklahoma did the same to Oklahoma State. UCLA left behind sister school and rival Cal.

Just those examples combined for 900 years of college football tradition flushed down the drain for a cash grab. What's an annual meeting with a rival compared to millions and millions of dollars? Why work extra hard to schedule an inconvenient out-of-conference series to preserve a rivalry when you could spend that time counting all the zeros?

The inconvenient truth about USC-Notre Dame

There's no denying the Greatest Intersectional Rivalry in College Football is inconvenient, for USC especially. As an independent, the Fighting Irish could set their schedule with as many homes games and difficult matchups as they wanted. The Trojans have always been beholden to a conference schedule — one with nine conference games at that. Playing an out-of-conference game against a perennial Top 25 program annually is a challenge, especially when that game is on the road every other year. If you want to schedule any other marquee matchups, you're willfully doubling the strength of schedule impact.

Notre Dame has arguably kept USC from a national title no less than five times in their history. The Trojans have returned the favor just as many times, so it's not like the rivalry hasn't cost the Irish something along the way. The Irish have also had to deal with the inconvenience of traveling two time zones away every other November to face a college football blue blood. A long-distance grudge match presents a unique challenge.

The passion of rivalry eclipses inconvenient truths

In the end, the rivalry has brought much more to the two programs than it has taken. Every year since 1926, USC and Notre Dame have ensured the other is battle tested. Players have won awards with the rivalry as a springboard. Title cases have been given weight by a win over a heavyweight. They've made every achievement more meaningful, inconvenience be damned.

You know what else is inconvenient? Putting together a conference schedule while also protecting rivalries. Yet that's a burden the ACC, Big Ten and SEC have taken on.

Protected/annual games by conference

The ACC devised a "3-5-5" model, which has since been adjusted for the inclusion of Cal, SMU and Stanford. The schedule makes specific rivalries permanent on the annual schedule, rotating through the rest of the league on a cycle.

The Big Ten literally called their model "Flex Protect XVIII." They went out of their way to ensure teams would keep their most valued rivals on the annual schedule. Iowa found a way to get three protected rivals while most others schools got one or two. Setting out a coherent schedule rotation while one team has three rivals and others have one sounds like a nightmare.

The SEC moved to a nine-game schedule and tried to find a middle ground between protecting rivalries and competitive balance. They settled on assigning each school three annual opponents. Some of those are convenient partnerships, but let's be honest: This model exists to protect games like the "World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party," the Iron Bowl, Egg Bowl, etc.

It doesn't have to be this way. College football scheduling is a mess. Conferences could have simplified everything by doing what every other league does: Separating into divisions and accepting that some teams won't play each other every year. The NFL had a great rivalry going between the Patriots and Colts in the era of Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. They didn't bend the rules to make sure they faced each other every year. They stuck to their scheduling structure, content with meetings between those rivals being at the mercy of playoff matchups.

But college football hasn't taken the simple, easy route. The powers-that-be in each conference looked at the tangled threads and independently decided not to slice through them with a pair of scissors. They chose the chaos. They sided with rivalry.

To quote the SEC: "It Just Means More"

How to resurrect a rivalry

We know rivalries transcend the politics, cash grabs and bureaucracies of college football because as easy as they are to kill, they're also hard to keep buried.

The Backyard Brawl

In 2011, Pitt and West Virginia ripped apart one of college football's most heated rivalries: The Backyard Brawl. The rivalry started in 1895 and had been played 104 times. Then the Panthers left the Big East for the ACC and the Mountaineers joined the Big 12. Between 2012 and 2021, the schools separated by just 75 miles didn't face each other on the football field. Finally, in 2022, an out-of-conference agreement was struck. On Sept. 1, 2022, Pitt beat West Virginia, 38-31, in front of a raucous sold-out crowd of 70,622 — the record for a sporting event in Pittsburgh.

The renewed series only happened because of pressure from both fan bases. People inside and outside the programs cared about the game enough to bring it back to life The rivals have since extended the rivalry from the initial four-game agreement from 2022-2025. They'll be back at it in 2029 with an agreement through 2036 this time.

The Border War

Missouri and Kansas took the hatred borne of a deep-seated pre-Civil War regional conflict and played it out through athletics for over a century in The Border War. Battles were even more heated on the basketball court, but the football rivalry between the two schools started in 1891 and continued through 2012 when Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC. Poof! One of college football's lengthiest rivalries was gone.

Nearly a decade went by before they locked in an out-of-conference series. The Tigers and Jayhawks renewed the rivalry on Sept. 6, 2025. Kansas jumped out to a shocking 15-point lead in the first quarter, but Mizzou roared back to win, 42-31. It was everything fans could have hoped for. And they'll get more where that came from. Games are scheduled for 2026, 2031 and 2032, at the least. The basketball rivalry has also been restored. With a bit more fan pressure even more dates will come.

Heroes get remembered and rivalries never die

Not every rivalry that dies gets the chance to be resurrected, but fans don't let the memories or the passion slip away. They're always lurking.

USC and Notre Dame shouldn't get any ideas. They've maintained an out-of-conference rivalry for a century and the institutions owe it to college football — and their fans — to keep it alive. If the rivalry goes away, Trojans and Irish alike will be irate. It's the promise of that anger that should force the two sides to figure it out.

It matters that the Trojans and Fighting Irish play ever year. Just like it matters that Iowa and Iowa State keep the Cy-Hawk Trophy going and Florida and Florida State still face off for the Florida Cup and Clemson and South Carolina maintain the Battle of the Palmetto State and Georgia and Georgia Tech keep stoking Clean, Old Fashioned Hate.

College football is a lot of things these days, greed taking an increasingly large slice of the pie. Conference affiliation and College Football Playoff bids equal cashflow. Money can buy a lot of things, but it can't buy hatred.