The Times of Troy: Taking a closer look at new USC Trojans football GM Chad Bowden

Hi everyone, and welcome back for another week of the Times of Troy newsletter. I’m Ryan Kartje, your USC beat writer at The Times. We’re approaching February, which means I’m just now coming to terms with the end of football season. The first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff is behind us. The calendar has officially turned to the 2025 season, when once again the landscape of college football will turn on its head. Just like it did the year before. And the year before that.

USC has, in my six years on the beat, consistently been one step behind those tectonic shifts to the sport. (I, for one, will never forget Mike Bohn refusal to acknowledge the existence of the first NIL collective that formed at USC.) But in hiring a new general manager this week, the belief among USC’s leadership is that the program is finally getting ahead of the curve.

Over four seasons at Notre Dame, where he first started as a recruiting coordinator, Chad Bowden made a reputation for pushing the envelope and thinking outside the box. Which made him something of an interesting fit at a place so conservative and steeped in tradition as Notre Dame. But at USC, one could argue that’s exactly what’s needed.

“There are no boundaries for where his mind goes,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said of Bowden during an episode of Notre Dame’s official podcast, Wake Up The Echoes.

This is a guy who once suggested Freeman jump out of a helicopter to impress a recruit. He isn’t afraid to take risks — or wear a costume for a bit. But beyond the stunts, Bowden also clearly played a critical role in pushing Notre Dame into the modern age of college football, as it pertains to NIL and the transfer portal.

It helped that he and Freeman were very close, which makes his decision to trade Notre Dame for its rival all the more intriguing. Though, tripling a guy’s salary and paying him seven figures is certainly a convincing place to start.

Now he’ll have to work alongside Lincoln Riley, who has a very different personality, and he’ll have a tough task ahead of him at USC, where Riley will be under pressure to win immediately. But to hear Freeman talk about Bowden and his vision, it’s not hard to see how he could help USC’s head coach.

“Most of the time he has outside-the-box ideas. He pushes me.” Freeman said on that podcast. “You talk about a guy that challenges me to think outside of the box to get outside my comfort zone, sometimes I gotta say no. He is a guy that makes me better.”

To learn a little bit more about USC’s new GM, I reached out to a fellow college football writer who knows Notre Dame, Matt Fortuna, co-host of The Independent, a podcast on Notre Dame, and the founder of the Inside Zone, an excellent source of college football news. Can’t recommend Matt’s work enough — and if you’re so inclined, consider subscribing at insidezonemf.com.

What was your first reaction to Bowden taking the USC GM job?

I was definitely surprised at first. USC is Notre Dame’s biggest rival, so that’s a twist you usually don’t see coming. And, let’s face it, the programs are in different places right now as each coach enters his fourth year, so there’s some risk (also lots of potential upside) from Bowden’s end of things. But as someone at Notre Dame told me shortly after the news broke, this is an easier job to do at USC than it is at Notre Dame. Throw in the salary upgrade, and you can make sense of this move.

What is USC getting in Chad Bowden as its GM? What did he mean to Notre Dame’s recruiting and personnel operation?

He once got kicked out of the South Bend airport for welcoming recruits to town with a boombox. He definitely operated differently from how the Irish usually go about their business, and some of the old guard there isn’t exactly sad to see him go. Still, name me a championship contender who hasn’t had someone around to make folks uncomfortable from time to time. A segment of the fan base will rightly point out that Notre Dame’s recruiting rankings aren’t all that different from the Brian Kelly days, but the number of underclassmen — and transfers — who made an impact for the Irish during this run to the national championship game tells a different story.

Where Bowden truly excelled was in bonding with the recruits and their parents. Bowden is a young guy who is well-versed in the lingo of this generation, but I was always taken aback by how many parents went out of their way to single out how good their experiences with him were. Bowden was one of Sherrone Moore’s first calls when Moore got the Michigan job last year, and Notre Dame ultimately paid to keep Bowden. But I don’t think Michigan was offering anything near what USC did this time around.

Bowden was really close to Marcus Freeman. How do you anticipate him working with Lincoln Riley, who has a very different personality?

One of the funnier sights online last year was when Bowden got married and you saw pictures of Freeman — yes, the Notre Dame head football coach — standing among the groomsmen. That’s how close the two were, as Freeman brought Bowden with him from Cincinnati after the Irish hired him as defensive coordinator in 2021. There was definitely an element of big brother-little brother to their relationship, with Bowden always pushing up against the limits of Freeman and the school.

I’m not entirely sure what, if any, relationship Riley and Bowden have had prior to this move. But I would imagine USC did its homework, and if Bowden could sell South Bend, he sure will be able to sell L.A., presumably with fewer limitations than he had at Notre Dame.

Road warriors

Kennedy Smith steals the ball from CS Northridge guard Morgan Edwards earlier this season.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Since the Trojans traveled three thousand miles east a month ago to make a nonconference statement by beating Connecticut on the Huskies’ own floor, USC’s women’s basketball team has played a total of three games at home. They’ve racked up some frequent-flier miles in the meantime.

Three thousand miles cross country to Rutgers. Then a short flight to Maryland. Then three thousand miles back. Two thousand miles to Indiana. A short drive to Purdue. Then two thousand miles back. Next weekend, they’ll head to Iowa, 1,800 miles away, then Wisconsin, another three-hour trip after that.

That’s an absolute gauntlet. Just as grueling as some pro basketball teams. And yet USC has yet to lose away from L.A. this season. Its average margin of victory away from Galen Center is 24 points. And while that margin may be swayed by a few massive victories (50 points over Rutgers, 42 points over Purdue), it’s hard to argue with 8-0 on the road. Especially when two of those victories came over top 10 teams.

We knew that Big Ten travel would take a toll, especially on USC’s basketball teams. But you won’t catch Lindsay Gottlieb or her team complaining about it.

“Honestly,” freshman Kennedy Smith said, “I think we’ve all just done a great job not thinking about it.”

“We know that nobody cares how many miles we’ve traveled,” Gottlieb added after USC routed Purdue in West Lafayette last Wednesday. “Nobody cares if we’re on the road. They look at win or loss.”

There is one part of their travel slate they’re not so keen on.

“The cold,” Gottlieb said, “is a real thing.”

Extra points

—In rebuilding its football program, USC has spared no expense. The school spent nearly $20 million to hire Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma, then at least $10 million per year in salary the two years after that. Hiring a top notch defensive coordinator like D’Anton Lynn took another $2 million salary, before USC shelled out even more with a multi-year contract extension that this month made him one of the top paid coordinators in college football — again. Then Friday, USC backed up the Brinks truck to steal Bowden, to rebuild its personnel department. All three will be among the highest-paid in the nation at their respective positions next season, which sends a pretty clear message: USC is willing to spend to return the football program to prominence. And that’s before we talk about the $200-million football facility on the way, or the $20.5 million in revenue that USC will soon be sharing with athletes. The results, as of yet, haven’t been in line with the school’s investment. But there’s no questioning USC’s willingness to pay in solving its problems.

—Reggie Bush wants to be head coach at USC someday. In an interview with the Sporting Tribune, the Trojan legend said that he has “this urge inside of me to get out and coach” and that his dream would be to do that at USC. Maybe once upon a time, that would’ve been possible. But that was before Bush demanded the legal fees from his Heisman pursuit be paid by USC. And before he sued USC last year. University officials had made inroads to repair the relationship with Bush — then they found out about the lawsuit in a post on social media. Suffice to say, they weren’t happy. I would never rule out that a relationship can be repaired in the future. But the lawsuit remains ongoing, and Bush has made no effort that I’m aware of to talk it out with his alma mater.

—Pete Carroll will continue teaching his class, “Game is Life,” at USC this spring while taking over as the Las Vegas Raiders head coach. If you ever found yourself questioning Carroll’s vitality at age 73, well … Professor Pete would like a word. How much he’ll actually be teaching, or even physically present, this spring semester is another question entirely. But good on Carroll for keeping his promise to the kids who signed up to hear from him specifically. Raiders fans don’t seem thrilled with the idea, but Part-Time Pete might still be better than any of their Full-Time options over the last decade.

A Times of Troy community shout out …

Comes from Roy Nwaisser, who many of you know affectionately as USC Psycho. Roy emailed me hoping to highlight a neighbor whose dogged dedication to moderating a neighborhood group chat helped keep an entire community in Encino safe and informed during the fires.

Anita Kamjoo started a neighborhood group chat in Encino Hills as a means for neighbors to stay informed about what was going on in the community. But the chat had expanded to over 450 people by the time fire threatened the neighborhood earlier this month. Tensions on the chat rose during the fire, but Anita, Roy says, helped “soothe members while dealing with her own evacuation situation.”

“She probably spent hours a day during the evacuation keeping things humming,” Roy said. “She says we are all important, like pieces of a puzzle, but she is the one who brought us together and is the glue that holds it all together.”

Fortunately, the community was able to stay safe during the fires. And our deepest respect here at Times of Troy goes out to Anita and others like her who stepped up in a time of real crisis.

In case you missed it

USC hires Notre Dame’s Chad Bowden as its football general manager

Desmond Claude scores 21 points as USC men defeat Nebraska

No. 4 USC women hold Purdue to two points in second quarter of rout

What I’m Watching This Week

Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in “A Real Pain.”

(Sundance Institute)

Our Oscars’ Best Picture marathon now has an official list to operate with … and while this movie wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, I would recommend our readers give “A Real Pain” a chance this awards season. Jesse Eisenberg wrote, directed and starred in this story about two cousins who take a trip to Poland to see where their grandmother grew up. Kieran Culkin is a manic you can’t keep your eyes off of, per usual, but Eisenberg delivers a performance that surprised me.