A dozen years earlier than he charted a daring, new path for the USC soccer program, Chad Bowden was dwelling on the pull-out sofa of a cramped studio condo in Hollywood with no clue the place his life was headed.
Bowden couldn’t have dreamed up the function he’d in the future occupy just a few miles down the road at USC, the place because the Trojans soccer normal supervisor, Bowden has infused this system with new power whereas placing collectively the highest recruiting class in America.
So how did Bowden rise from that sofa to being held up as probably the most consequential arrivals at USC since Pete Carroll himself?
Bowden thought that he would possibly play faculty soccer. A couple of small faculties had provided him alternatives to play linebacker popping out of highschool in Cincinnati. However Bowden’s father, former baseball normal supervisor Jim Bowden, didn’t assume it was the proper transfer. He nervous about how his son would deal with the remainder of the faculty expertise.
“He felt like it was best for me, from a maturity standpoint, to go right into working,” Bowden says.
USC soccer normal supervisor Chad Bowden appears to be like throughout the sector throughout preseason camp.
(William Liang/For The Occasions)
Which is what led him to the tiny condo off Highland Avenue. He break up the place with Jac Collinsworth, his shut highschool good friend, the 2 of them packed like sardines right into a single room that doubled because the kitchen and eating house. Neither appeared to thoughts the shut quarters. Every little thing grew to become a contest, with every of them pushing the opposite.
“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 each morning, they’d wake earlier than dawn to race one another to L.A. Health. After, they’d race again up the hill to devour the standard breakfast of egg whites — generally mashing in bananas for sweetness. Some days, they’d throw in a motivational video on YouTube to get the blood pumping once more, earlier than racing off to attempt to be the primary within the workplace.
They have been each staying up late, getting up early, grinding all day in between. However after some time, it felt to Bowden like he was operating in place. He’d tried an internship with a sports activities company, solely to comprehend the company life wasn’t for him. Then he bought Google adverts for a corporation known as Linktech, whiling away his days cold-calling strangers who weren’t precisely completely happy to listen to from him. It gave him perspective, he says. However not a lot else.
It was vital to Bowden to seek out his path as quickly as doable. He’d all the time deliberate for fulfillment at a younger age, Jac Collinsworth says. His father, in spite of everything, was employed by the Cincinnati Reds because the youngest GM in baseball historical past again in 1992, and Bowden had virtually grown up in that Reds clubhouse. He rode in Ken Griffey Jr’s Lamborghini. He was within the draft rooms, the commerce talks, the contract negotiations. As soon as, he even known as out a Reds participant’s lack of hustle on the basepaths — and ended up stuffed in a rubbish can.
His childhood was intertwined with the sport. Even dinnertime might activate an evening’s outcome. When the Reds gained a recreation, father and son would exit to an area steakhouse for dinner. Once they misplaced, Chad says, they’d solely 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 onerous as he was working, Bowden didn’t appear to be getting any nearer to discovering his means in L.A. Evan Dreyer was nervous about him.
Dreyer had coached Bowden as a freshman soccer participant at Anderson Excessive in Cincinnati, and so they’d stayed in contact since. So when Dreyer was out in L.A., he checked in on his favourite former participant.
“Chad needed somebody to look him in the eye and say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” Dreyer says.
He known as Bowden again quickly after and provided him a job as his defensive coordinator at Western Brown Excessive, again in Ohio.
Bowden was simply 20 years outdated. He had no teaching expertise, apart from filling in for just a few weeks as an assistant baseball coach for Dreyer at 14. However Dreyer knew how a lot Bowden cherished soccer. And he had little doubt that Bowden was sure for nice issues. He noticed it in Bowden even earlier than highschool, as early because the fifth grade, when all the child’s power was zeroed in on being the very best water boy he might be. He sprinted full velocity down the sideline to retrieve a free ball. He didn’t care for varsity, however memorized the stats of opposing gamers. It was clear he took pleasure within the job.
USC normal supervisor Chad Bowden, middle, attends a workforce follow.
(USC Athletics)
However that was when soccer first swept Bowden up. Now, years later, Dreyer was providing him an opportunity to get his foot within the door.
“He called me and was like, ‘What are you doing with your life? Football is everything to you.’” Bowden says. “I simply sort of sat there and stated, ‘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 a lot better. He dialed up blitz after blitz, simply hoping for the very best. One evening, his protection gave up virtually 80 factors, and a pissed off Bowden was ejected from the sport.
Nonetheless, he wasn’t one to sit down idly by, ready on an issue to resolve itself. Even when there was no apparent — or rational — resolution. One week, when his protection gave up over 400 speeding yards, he responded by shopping for big tubs of peanut butter, satisfied extra sandwiches might be the important thing to bulking up his defensive entrance.
As soon as, he babysat for Dreyer’s 3-year outdated daughter and upon discovering out she cherished faculty buses, got down to cease one on the street with a view to give her a trip.
There have been no half-measures with Bowden, on or off the soccer subject. He most popular to take issues into his personal palms if he needed to.
“That’s the best way to understand Chad,” Collinsworth stated. “He will move a mountain to make something happen.”
He appeared to be in fixed movement, attending faculty on the College of Cincinnati along with teaching.
After two seasons teaching highschool soccer, Bowden determined to strive a brand new route. A good friend of his father helped hook him up with a possibility to shadow the senior vice chairman of the Miami Dolphins, who ultimately helped join him with Brian Mason, the brand new recruiting coordinator at Cincinnati.
Mason employed Bowden as a scholar intern, serving to out with Cincinnati’s recruiting. It didn’t take lengthy for him to make an impression on the remainder of the workers.
Some staffers, Mason says, have been admittedly “thrown off a little bit by his energy” after they first met him. However there was no doubting Bowden’s work ethic as an intern. When Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell gave him a activity, coaches keep in mind Bowden sprinting down the hallway to finish it.
“We had to tell him to leave the office, even as a student intern,” Mason stated. “He’d go 100 miles per hour to get things done.”
Mason performed a crucial function serving to Bowden focus that power. He surrounded him with construction and taught Bowden find out how to be higher organized with out 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 linked Bowden with Marcus Freeman, who on the time was Cincinnati’s defensive coordinator. Bowden requested if he might sit in on conferences with Freeman and Fickell to soak up as a lot information as he might.
Bowden didn’t keep quiet in these conferences for lengthy. “I never shut up after that,” he says.
It was out of that back-and-forth banter that Bowden and Freeman fashioned an in depth bond. Each, based on their fellow coaches, appeared uniquely fitted to protecting the opposite in steadiness. The place Freeman was the extra measured and considerate of the 2, Bowden was daring and daring. He would push the envelope, and Freeman would rein him again in if want be.
“Like yin and yang,” stated Mason, who additionally labored with each at Notre Dame.
Bowden rapidly rose via the ranks at Cincinnati, from defensive high quality management assistant to recruiting director. Alongside the way in which, there was “tough love” from Freeman that, Bowden says, was precisely what he wanted to listen to.
Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman and his workforce line as much as enter the sector in opposition to USC on the Coliseum on Nov. 30.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Occasions)
“He gave me what I needed to be the best version of me,” he stated. “‘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 introduced alongside Bowden, who took a lesser function in South Bend. A yr later, Freeman was promoted to go coach and Bowden grew to become his recruiting director and right-hand man.
The recruiting operation rapidly took on Bowden’s character.
“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 got here to speaking to recruits, Gerad Parker, who coached tight ends at Notre Dame, likened Bowden to “the crazy uncle at the birthday party.” Throughout official visits, he orchestrated NBA type entrances for recruits and their households. Typically he confirmed up in costume. He memorably dressed up as a leprechaun, one other time as an FBI agent.
A leprechaun costume at Notre Dame may appear foolish, however Parker stated Bowden owned it.
“It’s like going into character when you’re working at Disney,” Parker stated. “Those people don’t roll their eyes because they’re in a Cinderella costume. They are Cinderella.”
In fact, not all of his concepts received previous the slicing room ground. For one, Freeman refused Bowden’s request to leap out of a helicopter to impress recruits.
“He might bring a list of five ideas, right? And four of them are crazy,” Mason stated. “He brought up helicopters on multiple occasions.”
No matter others considered his strategies, Bowden’s strategy was working. He was relentless in constructing relationships. Recruits raved about his affect. Notre Dame pulled in a trio of top-12 lessons that may function the bedrock of a run to the nationwide title recreation.
Michigan had already pursued Bowden to be its normal supervisor earlier than that 2024 run. He turned it down, with a view to proceed on with Freeman.
By the next January, Bowden determined to vary instructions. 4 days after Notre Dame misplaced to Ohio State within the nationwide championship, he was named USC’s new soccer normal supervisor.
On the time, Bowden known as the choice “a no-brainer.” Whereas speaking with reporters in March, he stated “some things that were out of my control” at Notre Dame.
However to those that as soon as labored with each Freeman and Bowden, it was sudden..
“That had to weigh heavy on Chad,” stated Parker, the Irish tight ends coach.
“[They were] like brothers,” stated 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 selecting USC, Bowden was as soon as once more putting out on his personal, strolling away from the world he knew finest for the promise of constructing one thing greater and higher. Fittingly, it will carry him again to town the place his seek for a profession started.
In seven months at USC, he has fully revamped the entrance workplace operation along with his hand-picked workers, repaired relationships with native coaches and energy brokers and reinvigorated USC’s total recruiting technique. The Trojans’ 2026 class has soared to the highest of the nationwide recruiting rankings, with 32 commitments and climbing. And boosters are shopping for in, as soon as once more crowding the sidelines of soccer practices.
Workers members will let you know that Bowden’s affect in that brief time at USC runs deeper. That his power and his willingness to check limits and problem norms has set a tone for all the division.
When USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen approached Bowden throughout a latest soccer follow, she discovered him busy scribbling down notes.
“He had 15 things from that practice that he noticed or ideas that he had,” she stated.
“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 element, all the way down to the workforce’s bathroom paper, is just too small.
“His mind is always going,” stated USC secondary coach Doug Belk. “I don’t know if he sleeps at night.”
Bowden has no bother seeing the trail forward of him and reveals no indicators of slowing down.
“If I could be here for forever, I would,” Bowden stated. “That’s how much this means to me. I think about it every day.”
