2 yearly rivalry games USC football fans will miss the most

Ronald Jones, USC Football, USC Trojans
Ronald Jones, USC Football, USC Trojans / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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USC football's move to the Big Ten won't affect their two biggest yearly rivalry games. They will be keeping the Notre Dame game alive every year, as Notre Dame not being in the Pac-12 leaves them with no issue scheduling USC. UCLA, too, will appear on SC's schedule every year since they are heading to the Big Ten with USC.

The rest of their yearly matchups, however, are in SERIOUS jeopardy. SC will only have two out-of-conference matchups left to schedule due to a nine-game conference schedule and the classic Notre Dame-SC rivalry game being scheduled every year.

Therefore, SC's other two rivals--Stanford and Cal will not be able to play against SC every year anymore. One may ask why, because SC can just schedule those two as their remaining out-of-conference games.

The reason is because those other two out-of-conference games are the opportunity for the Trojans to schedule some key opponents that will make their resume look better. The first year USC plays in the Big Ten (2024), for instance, they play LSU in Week 1.

Could Stanford and Cal be those key opponents to drive up the squad's out-of-conference schedule? Potentially, but the likelihood of USC scheduling them every year is close to zero percent. They already are AT LEAST not scheduling one of them in 2024.

The only way USC football can guarantee playing Cal and Stanford every season is if those two move to the Big Ten.

And as of right now, the remaining 10 Pac-12 teams are expected to stick together. The Big Ten reportedly did not want any other Pac-12 teams other than USC and UCLA. It was funny to see the Big Ten want SC and not them, but traditionalists would rather see USC playing Stanford and Cal every year.

While both Stanford and Cal are poor football programs, the two teams schedule each other every year due to the two teams having been around a long while and scheduling each other since the early days. Therefore, they are somewhat rivals to the blueblood SC program.

In fact, Stanford has actually pulled off some notable stunning upsets of USC at times in these past 14 years. They love to try to play spoiler either late OR early in seasons, and SC stunned them with an iconic upset of their own in 2013 when Coach Ed Orgeron defeated them while Stanford was trying to contend for a National Title.

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So, enjoy these next two games between Stanford and USC, as well as these next two games between Cal and USC. It appears that they may not happen very often as soon as the Trojans head to the Big Ten. SC is currently 62-34-3 against Stanford and 71-31-5 against Cal in the two one-sided rivalries.

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