The USC-Ole Miss series is off.
With the Trojans’ difficulty in schedule increasing as they prepare for life in the Big Ten and the Rebels expecting the SEC to switch from eight to nine conference games in 2026, the two schools ultimately decided to cancel their home-and-home series on Tuesday, with both parties mutually agreeing to the cancellation.
USC was slated to host Ole Miss at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Aug. 30 to kick off the 2025 season before traveling to Oxford to take on the Rebels in 2026.
The Trojans and Rebels set up the pair of games in May 2020, not even six months after Ole Miss announced Lane Kiffin as their new football boss. From 2010 to 2013, Kiffin was the head coach at USC after serving as an assistant to the Trojan football team from 2001 to 2006 under Pete Carroll.
But Kiffin’s tenure in Los Angeles ended abruptly and unceremoniously, as former athletic director Pat Haden fired him on the LAX tarmac following a humiliating 62-41 loss to Arizona State in Tempe on Sep. 28, 2013. Kiffin’s expected return to the Coliseum to face his former team gave fans an additional aspect of intrigue given his ties to USC.
In fact, his ties to the school appear to be strengthening, because while his oldest daughter Landry is currently enrolled at Ole Miss, his younger daughter Presley is currently committed to join the USC women’s volleyball team.
In addition to the Kiffin family, Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart — who played his freshman year at USC before transferring to Oxford following the hiring of head coach Lincoln Riley and the subsequent arrival of Caleb Williams — also seemingly found himself caught up between his current and former school as a result of the series.
While at USC, Dart took over as the starting quarterback in 2021 as Kedon Slovis regressed offensively and struggled with injuries during his third and final year with the Trojans. While Dart will be out of eligibility after the 2024 season and would not have played in this two-game set, his one year of service to USC also helped hype up the series, especially considering that he decided to join Kiffin and the Rebels.
The news of USC and Ole Miss canceling their home-and-home comes three weeks after unnamed sources told Matt Hayes of Saturday Down South that USC had spent almost two years trying to get out of the Vegas Kickoff Classic against LSU to start the Trojans’ 2024 season.
The news of USC wanting to get out of the LSU game broke around the same time that rumors emerged that the Ole Miss series would be canceled. This has led fans to wonder if Riley is afraid to face talented non-conference Power Five foes, while also leaving many fans disappointed with the decision.
With the series officially off the table, USC will now need to find replacement non-conference foes to replace the Ole Miss games and finalize their non-conference slates for 2025 and 2026.