After a prolonged and detailed search to land a general manager for the football program, USC struck a blow at its rival in hiring away Chad Bowden from Notre Dame.

FootballScoop.com, 247Sports.com’s Matt Zenitz and others were first to report the news.

USC has yet to officially announce the hire.

As for why it’s such a big deal, Bowden was just recently named FootballScoop.com’s Player Personnel Director of the Year.

Bowden carried the title of assistant athletics director/general manager at Notre Dame. He initially followed coach Marcus Freeman (then the defensive coordinator) to Notre Dame in 2021 and took on the role of defensive recruiting coordinator in an analyst role before Freeman promoted Bowden to director of recruiting for the entire program once he became head coach.

Michigan made a run at poaching him a year ago before he opted to remain with the Irish.

“He’s elite at what he does, and he’s one of the hardest workers I know,” Freeman said of Bowden in December of 2023 on Wake Up the Echoes, a video podcast produced by Notre Dame’s in-house Fighting Irish Media. “There’s times where I’m actually like envious of the relationships he has with our recruits — maybe even with my kids. My kids, when they come to the office, most of the time they say, ‘Hi, Dad.’ They go right into the recruiting office and spend time with Chad and his staff, because they have a unique ability to bring those kids in and communicate and spend time with them.

“That’s trust. Trust is built over time. That’s why I’ve always wanted to work with him. He’s a hard worker. He’s a really good person. Most of the time he has outside the box ideas. He pushes me. Like one of our things is ‘The Golden Standard’. Challenge everything. 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.”

Notre Dame’s recruiting classes ranked No. 6 in 2022, No. 11 in 2023, No. 9 in 2024 and No. 11 in 2025.

USC has had Dave Emerick in the role of senior associate athletic director for football / general manager. A long-time friend of Riley whom he brought over from Mississippi State, Emerick will move into a chief of staff role for the football program, having his hand in a lot of areas while also remaining involved in recruiting efforts, while Bowden will lead the recruiting department overall and manage the components of recruiting that define this new world of college football with revenue sharing “salary cap” management on top of NIL, dealing with agents, etc.

The bottom line is the response around college football reverberates that the Trojans just made a major addition to their operation.

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