Oregon. USC. Cal. Notre Dame. It has a bit of a ring to it.

Oregon. USC. Cal. Notre Dame. Four games (with a possible fifth) to determine which plane Stanford football will board this bowl season; four names that elicit a visceral reaction from any Stanford fan.

There’s the showdown against the Cardinal’s former kryptonite, the recently rejuvenated rivalry in SoCal, the historic contest with an archenemy and the meet up with a storied program that out-Stanforded Stanford last season. No four teams have been more heated rivals of the Cardinal during the last decade and a half, and no four regular-season games could bring the BCS era to a more fitting close for Stanford.

If everything goes well.

Maybe that’s why people are so scared of the Cardinal’s trip to USC this weekend. Full disclosure: I haven’t watched a USC game, start to finish, since Lane Kiffin was fired as head coach earlier this season. But just 10 days ago, it seemed like everyone expected Stanford to dominate the Trojans. After the Cardinal knocked off the No. 3 Ducks, that confidence gave way to wariness.

Does a fairytale finish to 2013 just seem too good to be true?

Oregon. USC. Cal. Notre Dame. We’ve actually seen this script before, back in 2009, when Stanford finished its regular season with these exact same opponents — in the exact same order. After upsetting the No. 7 Ducks at home — sound familiar — the Cardinal traveled to the Coliseum and put an infamous 55-21 beating on No. 11 USC.

That was two Trojans head coaches ago, which is important for a couple of reasons. First of all, we probably won’t be hearing “What’s your deal?” at midfield this Saturday, but more importantly, USC’s program is in a very different place this time around. Stanford was the straw that broke the Trojan camel’s back in 2009; it could be the cornerstone of a new USC dynasty’s palace in 2013.

2009 also taught us something else: Don’t sleep on Cal. The Bears were the only Stanford rival to beat the Card in that season-ending stretch four years ago, and a Big Game win is pretty much the only thing that could salvage their dismal 2013 season.

As a friend pointed out to me recently, in seven conference games, Stanford has handed six teams their first Pac-12 losses and given the seventh (Utah) its first and only Pac-12 win. The strange streak will end against the 4-2 Trojans, but if Cal can’t take care of the Colorado team it replaced as the Pac-12’s doormat, the Bears will enter Stanford Stadium at 0-8 in conference play. Just saying.

And you can’t ignore an Irish team that (with an exception in 2010) has always played the Cardinal close — and has won 10 of the teams’ 15 matchups since 1998. Though Stanford still has a bad taste in its mouth from last year’s loss, Notre Dame will be carrying a chip on its shoulder from the rest of its bumpy 2013 season.

Oregon. USC. Cal. Notre Dame. In a few weeks, we’ll either want to remember these four games for the rest of our lives or pretend they never happened.

I have no idea which.

Joseph Beyda is still holding out hope for a Shaw-Orgeron postgame verbal spat. Give him your predicted dialogue between the head coaches at jbeyda ‘at’ stanford.edu.