USC played in No. 1, four of Sports Illustrated’s Top 25 CFB games in past 25 seasons

As Sports Illustrated continues to cover College Football Quarter-Century Week, senior writer Pat Forde released a list of the Top 25 College Football games in the past 25 years. 

Forde’s top contest? The 2006 Rose Bowl. Texas bested USC 41-39 in the BCS National Championship game, derailing “a USC dynasty.” 

“The game had everything—two undefeated blueblood programs, two Heisman Trophy winners, a Heisman runner-up who felt spurned, a team trying for an unprecedented national championship three-peat, a coach searching for a validating first title, Keith Jackson on the call, a Rose Bowl setting,” Forde wrote. “And then the competition itself transcended the storylines.”

The USC Trojans played in not only Forde’s top game of the last two and a half decades, but also three other top-25 contests. 

Coming in at No. 7 was USC’s 34-31 win over rival Notre Dame in 2005, just one season before their Rose Bowl loss to the Longhorns. Down 31-28 in the second half, there was chaos before Reggie Bush made his move.

“With seven seconds put back on the clock, USC went for the win—Leinart tried a quarterback sneak and was immediately stacked up, then spun backward to his left,” Forde wrote. “Bush then seized the moment, shoving Leinart into the end zone—an illegal play at the time, but one that went uncalled and kept the Trojans’ three-peat bid alive.”

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Forde’s 14th-best game was more recently: the Trojans’ 2017 52-49 Rose Bowl victory over a Penn State roster including 2025 Super Bowl Champion Saquon Barkley. The running back recorded 306 all-purpose yards and scored three touchdowns against USC and quarterback Sam Darnold, who threw for 435 yards and five touchdowns.

USC’s fourth top-25 game also came during their early-2000s dynasty, a 2004 regular season matchup between the Trojans and California Berkeley, who relied on second-year starting quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Forde’s 22nd-best game, the Trojans bested the Golden Bears 23-17.

“By the end of this game, [Rodgers] revealed himself as a future all-time great,” Forde wrote. “But a day of dazzling accuracy ended with three incompletions and a sack, and USC hung on. The Trojans rolled to the national title from there with little opposition.”