Petros Papadakis unloads on Lincoln Riley, USC leadership over Notre Dame rivalry pause

Petros Papadakis didn’t need much time to process the news that USC and Notre Dame won’t play each other in 2026.

The former USC captain went on 570 LA Sports shortly after Monday’s announcement and unleashed on Lincoln Riley and the university’s leadership for allowing one of college football’s signature rivalries to end after 78 consecutive years. Papadakis, now a Fox Sports analyst, placed the blame squarely on Riley for even entertaining the idea that USC should stop playing Notre Dame annually.

“They’ve capitulated to a coach who’s not from here, who understands very little, it seems, about USC football,” Petros Papadakis said. “Coaches come and go. ADs come and go. We’ve lost SC-Notre Dame, and I blame Lincoln Riley and the weak leadership at USC for allowing this to happen. But, ultimately, USC should just replace the band with the DJ and replace the song girls with AI-OnlyFans chicks. Change the horse out for those two streamers that interviewed Puka Nacua. Let’s do it all. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

The rivalry pause apparently stems from USC’s concerns about College Football Playoff implications now that Notre Dame has a guaranteed spot if ranked in the top 12 starting in 2026. The Trojans originally agreed to compromise and play in November, but reversed course after learning about the exemption, worried about scenarios where they could beat the Fighting Irish late but still miss the playoff while Notre Dame gets in. USC pushed to move the game to Week Zero instead, and when the schools couldn’t agree on scheduling, the series just stopped.

Petros Papadakis continued by questioning whether Riley, who’s struggled to beat Big Ten opponents since arriving at USC, had earned the credibility to be making these kinds of decisions about what’s best for the program.

“This is a dark mark on the university for a lack of leadership,” he added. “And if USC is not going to play Notre Dame every year, I don’t know. I agree with Keyshawn — let’s just not play football. Let’s just play [UC] Davis and play those schools… It is a shameful day in the history of college football, and it started with Lincoln Riley, somebody who you would question should even be at the USC football program as the head coach.”

Keyshawn Johnson had posted his own reaction to social media earlier Monday, calling out the athletic department and Riley for their roles in ending the rivalry. The former USC star questioned whether anyone running USC’s football program actually understands what it means to be a Trojan and suggested Riley won’t even be around in 2030, when the schools say they want to resume the series, if he keeps missing the playoff.

And like Johnson, Papadakis was among those who thought USC was about to reclaim its spot at the top of college football when the school convinced Riley to leave Oklahoma in late 2021. That hire was supposed to fix everything that had gone wrong since Pete Carroll left, supposed to bring back the days when USC mattered nationally and didn’t have to worry about whether playing Notre Dame would hurt their playoff chances. Instead, here’s a former captain saying the program is living in a nightmare while the coach who was supposed to save everything is getting blamed for killing off the rivalry that helped define what USC football meant for nearly a century.

“It’s become a nightmare,” Papadakis said. “When he got hired, I thought it was a moment of glory. And now, we’re all living in a nightmare.”

Notre Dame is replacing USC with BYU for the next two seasons, playing in Provo next October before hosting the Cougars in South Bend in 2027. The schools claim they’ll bring the rivalry back in 2030, but that’s four years away, and given how this played out, there’s no guarantee it actually happens.