A dozen years before he charted a bold, new path for the USC football program, Chad Bowden was living on the pull-out couch of a cramped studio apartment in Hollywood with no clue where his life was headed.
Bowden couldn’t have dreamed up the role he’d one day occupy a few miles down the street at USC, where as the Trojans football general manager, Bowden has infused the program with new energy while putting together the top recruiting class in America.
So how did Bowden rise from that couch to being held up as one of the most consequential arrivals at USC since Pete Carroll himself?
Bowden thought that he might play college football. A few small schools had offered him opportunities to play linebacker coming out of high school in Cincinnati. But Bowden’s father, former baseball general manager Jim Bowden, didn’t think it was the right move. He worried about how his son would handle the rest of the college experience.
“He felt like it was best for me, from a maturity standpoint, to go right into working,” Bowden says.
USC football general manager Chad Bowden looks across the field during preseason camp.
(William Liang/For The Times)
Which is what led him to the tiny apartment off Highland Avenue. He split the place with Jac Collinsworth, his close high school friend, the two of them packed like sardines into a single room that doubled as the kitchen and dining space. Neither seemed to mind the close quarters. Everything became a competition, with each of them pushing the other.
“Both of us were highly motivated guys,” says Collinsworth, whose father is the famed commentator, Cris Collinsworth. “Plus we had (Chad’s) dad in our ear.”
So every morning, they would wake before sunrise to race each other to L.A. Fitness. After, they’d race back up the hill to devour the usual breakfast of egg whites — sometimes mashing in bananas for sweetness. Some days, they’d throw in a motivational video on YouTube to get the blood pumping again, before racing off to try to be the first in the office.
They were both staying up late, getting up early, grinding all day in between. But after a while, it felt to Bowden like he was running in place. He’d tried an internship with a sports agency, only to realize the agency life wasn’t for him. Then he sold Google ads for a company called Linktech, whiling away his days cold-calling strangers who weren’t exactly happy to hear from him. It gave him perspective, he says. But not much else.
It was important to Bowden to find his path as soon as possible. He’d always planned for success at a young age, Jac Collinsworth says. His father, after all, was hired by the Cincinnati Reds as the youngest GM in baseball history back in 1992, and Bowden had practically grown up in that Reds clubhouse. He rode in Ken Griffey Jr’s Lamborghini. He was in the draft rooms, the trade talks, the contract negotiations. Once, he even called out a Reds player’s lack of hustle on the basepaths — and ended up stuffed in a garbage can.
His childhood was intertwined with the game. Even dinnertime could turn on a night’s result. When the Reds won a game, father and son would go out to a local steakhouse for dinner. When they lost, Chad says, they would only eat Triscuits and cheese.
“(Chad) knew that he was going to have to work twice as hard to get that respect from his dad,” Collinsworth says.
As hard as he was working, Bowden didn’t seem to be getting any closer to finding his way in L.A. Evan Dreyer was worried about him.
Dreyer had coached Bowden as a freshman football player at Anderson High in Cincinnati, and they’d stayed in touch since. So when Dreyer was out in L.A., he checked in on his favorite former player.
“Chad needed somebody to look him in the eye and say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” Dreyer says.
He called Bowden back soon after and offered him a job as his defensive coordinator at Western Brown High, back in Ohio.
Bowden was just 20 years old. He had no coaching experience, aside from filling in for a few weeks as an assistant baseball coach for Dreyer at 14. But Dreyer knew how much Bowden loved football. And he had no doubt that Bowden was bound for great things. He saw it in Bowden even before high school, as early as the fifth grade, when all of the kid’s energy was zeroed in on being the best possible water boy he could be. He sprinted full speed down the sideline to retrieve a loose ball. He didn’t care for school, but memorized the stats of opposing players. It was clear he took pride in the job.
USC general manager Chad Bowden, center, attends a team practice.
(USC Athletics)
But that was when football first swept Bowden up. Now, years later, Dreyer was offering him a chance to get his foot in the door.
“He called me and was like, ‘What are you doing with your life? Football is everything to you.’” Bowden says. “I just kind of sat there and said, ‘What am I doing?”
So took Dreyer up on the offer. The only problem? He had no idea what he was doing as a defensive coordinator.
The team went 1-9. The next year, he followed Dreyer to another high school, and it didn’t get much better. He dialed up blitz after blitz, just hoping for the best. One night, his defense gave up almost 80 points, and a frustrated Bowden was ejected from the game.
Still, he wasn’t one to sit idly by, waiting on a problem to solve itself. Even if there was no obvious — or rational — solution. One week, when his defense gave up over 400 rushing yards, he responded by buying huge tubs of peanut butter, convinced more sandwiches could be the key to bulking up his defensive front.
Once, he babysat for Dreyer’s 3-year old daughter and upon finding out she loved school buses, set out to stop one in the street in order to give her a ride.
There were no half-measures with Bowden, on or off the football field. He preferred to take matters into his own hands if he had to.
“That’s the best way to understand Chad,” Collinsworth said. “He will move a mountain to make something happen.”
He seemed to be in constant motion, attending school at the University of Cincinnati in addition to coaching.
After two seasons coaching high school football, Bowden decided to try a new direction. A friend of his father helped hook him up with an opportunity to shadow the senior vice president of the Miami Dolphins, who eventually helped connect him with Brian Mason, the new recruiting coordinator at Cincinnati.
Mason hired Bowden as a student intern, helping out with Cincinnati’s recruiting. It didn’t take long for him to make an impression on the rest of the staff.
Some staffers, Mason says, were admittedly “thrown off a little bit by his energy” when they first met him. But there was no doubting Bowden’s work ethic as an intern. When Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell gave him a task, coaches remember Bowden sprinting down the hallway to complete it.
“We had to tell him to leave the office, even as a student intern,” Mason said. “He’d go 100 miles per hour to get things done.”
Mason played a critical role helping Bowden focus that energy. He surrounded him with structure and taught Bowden how to be better organized without tamping down his enthusiasm.
“I owe a lot of what happened in my life to Brian Mason,” Bowden says. “Brian did such a great job of understanding that I was crazy. But he also saw the good in me.”
Mason connected Bowden with Marcus Freeman, who at the time was Cincinnati’s defensive coordinator. Bowden asked if he could sit in on meetings with Freeman and Fickell to absorb as much knowledge as he could.
Bowden didn’t stay quiet in those meetings for long. “I never shut up after that,” he says.
It was out of that back-and-forth banter that Bowden and Freeman formed a close bond. Both, according to their fellow coaches, seemed uniquely suited for keeping the other in balance. Where Freeman was the more measured and thoughtful of the two, Bowden was bold and daring. He would push the envelope, and Freeman would rein him back in if need be.
“Like yin and yang,” said Mason, who also worked with both at Notre Dame.
Bowden quickly rose through the ranks at Cincinnati, from defensive quality control assistant to recruiting director. Along the way, there was “tough love” from Freeman that, Bowden says, was exactly what he needed to hear.
Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman and his team line up to enter the field against USC at the Coliseum on Nov. 30.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“He gave me what I needed to be the best version of me,” he said. “‘If this is what you want to be, this is what you need to do.’”
When Freeman left in 2021 to be Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator, he brought along Bowden, who took a lesser role in South Bend. A year later, Freeman was promoted to head coach and Bowden became his recruiting director and right-hand man.
The recruiting operation quickly took on Bowden’s personality.
“We were flying fast,” says Chris O’Leary, who coached safeties at Notre Dame. “Whether it was offers, calling kids, it was rapid fire all the time. Every day was life or death.”
When it came to talking to recruits, Gerad Parker, who coached tight ends at Notre Dame, likened Bowden to “the crazy uncle at the birthday party.” During official visits, he orchestrated NBA style entrances for recruits and their families. Sometimes he showed up in costume. He memorably dressed up as a leprechaun, another time as an FBI agent.
A leprechaun costume at Notre Dame might seem silly, but Parker said Bowden owned it.
“It’s like going into character when you’re working at Disney,” Parker said. “Those people don’t roll their eyes because they’re in a Cinderella costume. They are Cinderella.”
Of course, not all of his ideas got past the cutting room floor. For one, Freeman refused Bowden’s request to jump out of a helicopter to impress recruits.
“He might bring a list of five ideas, right? And four of them are crazy,” Mason said. “He brought up helicopters on multiple occasions.”
Whatever others thought of his methods, Bowden’s approach was working. He was relentless in building relationships. Recruits raved about his impact. Notre Dame pulled in a trio of top-12 classes that would serve as the bedrock of a run to the national title game.
Michigan had already pursued Bowden to be its general manager before that 2024 run. He turned it down, in order to continue on with Freeman.
By the following January, Bowden decided to change directions. Four days after Notre Dame lost to Ohio State in the national championship, he was named USC’s new football general manager.
At the time, Bowden called the decision “a no-brainer.” While talking with reporters in March, he said “some things that were out of my control” at Notre Dame.
But to those who once worked with both Freeman and Bowden, it was unexpected..
“That had to weigh heavy on Chad,” said Parker, the Irish tight ends coach.
“(They were) like brothers,” said O’Leary, the safeties coach. “I know there’s a lot of layers behind it. But yeah, I was surprised to see him leave Notre Dame.”
By choosing USC, Bowden was once again striking out on his own, walking away from the world he knew best for the promise of building something bigger and better. Fittingly, it would bring him back to the city where his search for a career began.
In seven months at USC, he has completely revamped the front office operation with his hand-picked staff, repaired relationships with local coaches and power brokers and reinvigorated USC’s entire recruiting strategy. The Trojans’ 2026 class has soared to the top of the national recruiting rankings, with 32 commitments and climbing. And boosters are buying in, once again crowding the sidelines of football practices.
Staff members will tell you that Bowden’s impact in that short time at USC runs deeper. That his energy and his willingness to test limits and challenge norms has set a tone for the entire department.
When USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen approached Bowden during a recent football practice, she found him busy scribbling down notes.
“He had 15 things from that practice that he noticed or ideas that he had,” she said.
“He’s the eyes and ears of a program in a way that really takes the pressure off of everyone. He’s just been great within the university community, within the athletic department, with donors, with former players. We could not be more pleased with the progress that he’s made and his team has made and the impact that he’s having on USC football.”
No detail, down to the team’s toilet paper, is too small.
“His mind is always going,” said USC secondary coach Doug Belk. “I don’t know if he sleeps at night.”
Bowden has no trouble seeing the path ahead of him and shows no signs of slowing down.
“If I could be here for forever, I would,” Bowden said. “That’s how much this means to me. I think about it every day.”
