Big Ten football: USC vs. Ohio State is conference’s next great rivalry

There are only a few football programs that can truly be considered blue-bloods. When it comes to Big Ten football, “The Big Two”, Ohio State and Michigan, are the obvious blue-bloods. However, starting next season in 2024, a third program that is considered a blue-blood by many will be joining the conference.

The University of Southern California brings some pretty impressive statistics to the table. The Trojans are 867-353-54 all time for a .702 winning percentage, making them one of the top 10 teams in college football history. The NCAA credits USC with nine national titles, which is good enough to be tied for sixth with Michigan. The Trojans have had eight Heisman Trophy winners, 29 first-team unanimous All-Americans and 510 players drafted into the NFL, which is first all-time.

As for postseason play, USC has been very impressive.

The Trojans have had 53 bowl appearance, a good number of which have been New Year’s Six or BCS bowls, with a record of 34-19. That’s good enough to be the highest postseason winning percentage of any school in the country with at least 50 postseason games.

In other words, USC has a great track record of winning big on the biggest stage historically.

USC’s track record vs. Big Ten football

As for USC and the Big Ten, the Trojans will march into the conference next season boasting an overall record of 75-30-3 against opponents in the league. They do not have a losing record against any Big Ten school. In fact, Michigan State is the only program in the conference who doesn’t have a losing record against USC as the all-time series sits at 4-4 in their eight-game history.

There is an obvious answer as to who could become USC’s greatest rival outside of UCLA within their new conference. Ohio State has played USC the most out of any Big Ten school, thanks in large part to how many times these teams have faced off in the postseason.

USC leads the overall series 13-10-1. The Trojans and Buckeyes are tied at 4-4 in bowl games with seven of those games happening at the Rose Bowl while Ohio State defeated USC 24-7 in the 2017 Cotton Bowl. That loss snapped a seven-game winning streak for the Trojans who hadn’t lost to Ohio State from 1975-2009 and included three consecutive Rose Bowl victories over the scarlet and gray.

Eight times Ohio State and USC have played in back-to-back seasons in what is commonly referred to as home-and-home series. On three occasions, the Trojans swept the Buckeyes in those series. Ohio State returned the favor in the 1941-42 series. The two teams split the series three times and one time the Buckeyes bested the Trojans in 1948 and they tied in 1949.

The first-ever meeting between the two programs was in 1937. USC won 13-to-12. The two programs are scheduled to play in 2025 with the Buckeyes being the benefactors of getting the game scheduled in Columbus, Ohio. The series is tied at four games apiece when played on Ohio State’s home turf.

USC’s head coach Lincoln Riley is 1-0 against the Buckeyes. He was a rookie head coach in 2017 when he brought the Oklahoma Sooners to Columbus and shocked Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes 31-16, watching Baker Mayfield plant the flag on the 50-yard-line in the ‘Shoe.

When Riley returns to Columbus in 2025, you can bet the college football world will be focused on Ohio Stadium as it will be the first time these two historic blue-bloods will face one another as conference foes and he and Ryan Day, considered by many to be the best quarterback developers in the nation, will face off against one another for the first time. That is unless they get a chance to play against one another in a postseason contest before 2025.