USC fans can only hope the photo (above) accompanying Friday’s announcement that Las Vegas will host the 2027 CFP championship game is prophetic.

With the Allegiant Stadium scoreboard in the background, with the USC Trojans logo on one side, there’s Jayden Maiava dropping back with good protection against Texas A&M in the Las Vegas Bowl.

Where will USC be in 2027? Back in Las Vegas? In the conversation? Or as it was much of this year, and certainly the last month, an afterthought?

Will it take the return of Pete Carroll to the NFL Friday – with the Raiders and to Las Vegas as well – to get USC back into the conversation even though his storied tenure here has been eclipsed a bit in the discussion by his time in Seattle?

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But it’s something, something to get USC back among the programs people are paying attention to. Like Notre Dame, USC’s historic companion at the top of college football for much of the last century. The Irish prove it’s not impossible to return to the top. There is a way back. With the right people. Doing the right things.

And now, one of those people is going to be doing the right things for USC. In the best move made by the Trojan program in this offseason, athletic director Jennifer Cohen corralled Notre Dame general manager — and recruiting/roster guru Chad Bowden, just 30, for a cool million dollars a year in a multi-year deal. Just the kind of general manager USC needed. A representative for the athletic director in the football program if not so much the football coach. 

Bowden was with Marcus Freeman here at Cincinnati where the Bearcats punched way above their weight, and he got his start heading up defensive recruiting. Then he went to Notre Dame, as comparable a program as you could ask for to USC and did it even better. And now, after turning down Michigan a year ago, he’s coming to USC — and talking “national championships.”

Just what Lincoln Riley needed, even if it’s not the hire Riley necessarily wanted. And what USC needs. A sign that you have to compete, have to spend the money when it will get you that key person/player you absolutely must have.

Great move for this Trojans’ program.

And now for some more thoughts about where USC is . . . and isn’t: