SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Consider this USC coach Lincoln Riley’s first victory over Notre Dame that didn’t involve a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.It’s a battle won in a war where everyone lost.The Notre Dame-USC football rivalry is back on; the schools on Monday announced an agreement to resume a series that defined multiple eras of the sport. Knute Rockne made Notre Dame football a national brand a century ago by taking his teams to the West Coast to face USC. The Irish and Trojans combined for half the national titles won in the 1970s. The Bush Push remains the defining Notre Dame memory for a generation of Irish fans.After a four-year break that begins this fall, Notre Dame will travel to USC to open the 2030 season, doing so on the Trojans’ timeline. The 2030 and 2031 games will be a Week 1 home-and-home; the final two games of the contract have not been set but will be played in the first month of the season, before USC opens Big Ten play — a demand on which the Trojans wouldn’t compromise. There will be no USC trips to South Bend as the leaves turn, nor Notre Dame flights to LAX on Thanksgiving weekend.The Notre Dame-USC series you remember is done. Riley killed it.The back-and-forth stretched for almost two years and devolved into he-said, he-said sniping before talks collapsed late last season despite plenty of public optimism coming from Notre Dame.The public posturing started with Riley’s complaints about balancing the difficulty of USC’s nine-game Big Ten schedule. It continued with a comment from Freeman about his desire to play “anytime, anywhere,” which USC weaponized when Notre Dame refused a proposal to play the game in Week 0. But to say the series is returning just how USC wanted it isn’t quite right, though. Because despite his protests to the contrary, it’s hard to believe that Riley wanted this series to resume at all.