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 residence in Hollywood with no clue the place his life was headed.
Bowden couldn’t have dreamed up the function he’d at some point occupy a number of miles down the road at USC, the place because the Trojans soccer common 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 one of the crucial consequential arrivals at USC since Pete Carroll himself?
Bowden thought that he may play faculty soccer. Just a few small colleges had supplied him alternatives to play linebacker popping out of highschool in Cincinnati. However Bowden’s father, former baseball common supervisor Jim Bowden, didn’t assume it was the appropriate transfer. He anxious about how his son would deal with the remainder of the faculty expertise.
“He felt prefer it was greatest for me, from a maturity standpoint, to go proper into working,” Bowden says.
USC soccer common supervisor Chad Bowden appears throughout the sphere throughout preseason camp.
(William Liang/For The Instances)
Which is what led him to the tiny residence off Highland Avenue. He cut up the place with Jac Collinsworth, his shut highschool pal, 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. All the pieces grew to become a contest, with every of them pushing the opposite.
“Each of us had been extremely 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 had 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 understand the company life wasn’t for him. Then he offered 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 search out his path as quickly as potential. He’d at all times deliberate for achievement 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 may activate an evening’s outcome. When the Reds gained a recreation, father and son would exit to an area steakhouse for dinner. After they misplaced, Chad says, they’d solely eat Triscuits and cheese.
“[Chad] knew that he was going to need to work twice as arduous to get that respect from his dad,” Collinsworth says.
As arduous as he was working, Bowden didn’t appear to be getting any nearer to discovering his manner in L.A. Evan Dreyer was anxious about him.
Dreyer had coached Bowden as a freshman soccer participant at Anderson Excessive in Cincinnati, they usually’d stayed in contact since. So when Dreyer was out in L.A., he checked in on his favourite former participant.
“Chad wanted any person to look him within the eye and say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” Dreyer says.
He known as Bowden again quickly after and supplied 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, except for filling in for a number of 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 excellent issues. He noticed it in Bowden even earlier than highschool, as early because the fifth grade, when the entire 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 college, however memorized the stats of opposing gamers. It was clear he took delight within the job.
USC common supervisor Chad Bowden, heart, attends a workforce apply.
(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 known as me and was like, ‘What are you doing along with your life? Soccer is all the things to you.’” Bowden says. “I simply sort of sat there and mentioned, ‘What am I doing?”
So took Dreyer up on the supply. The one drawback? He had no thought what he was doing as a defensive coordinator.
The workforce went 1-9. The subsequent 12 months, he adopted Dreyer to a different highschool, and it didn’t get significantly better. He dialed up blitz after blitz, simply hoping for the very best. One night time, his protection gave up virtually 80 factors, and a annoyed Bowden was ejected from the sport.
Nonetheless, he wasn’t one to take a seat idly by, ready on an issue to resolve itself. Even when there was no apparent — or rational — answer. One week, when his protection gave up over 400 speeding yards, he responded by shopping for enormous 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 experience.
There have been no half-measures with Bowden, on or off the soccer subject. He most well-liked to take issues into his personal palms if he needed to.
“That’s one of the best ways to know Chad,” Collinsworth mentioned. “He’ll transfer a mountain to make one thing occur.”
He gave the impression to be in fixed movement, attending faculty on the College of Cincinnati along with teaching.
After two seasons teaching highschool soccer, Bowden determined to attempt a brand new route. A pal 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 employees.
Some staffers, Mason says, had been admittedly “thrown off just a little bit by his power” 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 job, coaches bear in mind Bowden sprinting down the hallway to finish it.
“We needed to inform him to depart the workplace, whilst a scholar intern,” Mason mentioned. “He’d go 100 miles per hour to get issues accomplished.”
Mason performed a important function serving to Bowden focus that power. He surrounded him with construction and taught Bowden the way to be higher organized with out tamping down his enthusiasm.
“I owe a number of what occurred in my life to Brian Mason,” Bowden says. “Brian did such an excellent job of understanding that I used to be loopy. However he additionally noticed the great in me.”
Mason linked Bowden with Marcus Freeman, who on the time was Cincinnati’s defensive coordinator. Bowden requested if he may sit in on conferences with Freeman and Fickell to soak up as a lot data as he may.
Bowden didn’t keep quiet in these conferences for lengthy. “I by no means shut up after that,” he says.
It was out of that back-and-forth banter that Bowden and Freeman fashioned a detailed bond. Each, in keeping with 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,” mentioned Mason, who additionally labored with each at Notre Dame.
Bowden shortly rose by means of the ranks at Cincinnati, from defensive high quality management assistant to recruiting director. Alongside the best way, there was “powerful 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 sphere in opposition to USC on the Coliseum on Nov. 30.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Instances)
“He gave me what I wanted to be the very best model of me,” he mentioned. “‘If that is what you need to be, that is what you have 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 12 months later, Freeman was promoted to move coach and Bowden grew to become his recruiting director and right-hand man.
The recruiting operation shortly took on Bowden’s persona.
“We had been flying quick,” says Chris O’Leary, who coached safeties at Notre Dame. “Whether or not it was presents, calling children, it was speedy fireplace on a regular basis. Every single day was life or dying.”
When it got here to speaking to recruits, Gerad Parker, who coached tight ends at Notre Dame, likened Bowden to “the loopy uncle on the party.” Throughout official visits, he orchestrated NBA model 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 mentioned Bowden owned it.
“It’s like going into character if you’re working at Disney,” Parker mentioned. “These folks don’t roll their eyes as a result of they’re in a Cinderella costume. They’re Cinderella.”
In fact, not all of his concepts bought previous the reducing room ground. For one, Freeman refused Bowden’s request to leap out of a helicopter to impress recruits.
“He may carry a listing of 5 concepts, proper? And 4 of them are loopy,” Mason mentioned. “He introduced up helicopters on a number of events.”
No matter others considered his strategies, Bowden’s method was working. He was relentless in constructing relationships. Recruits raved about his influence. 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 common 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 alter instructions. 4 days after Notre Dame misplaced to Ohio State within the nationwide championship, he was named USC’s new soccer common supervisor.
On the time, Bowden known as the choice “a no brainer.” Whereas speaking with reporters in March, he mentioned “some issues that had been out of my management” at Notre Dame.
However to those that as soon as labored with each Freeman and Bowden, it was sudden..
“That needed to weigh heavy on Chad,” mentioned Parker, the Irish tight ends coach.
“[They were] like brothers,” mentioned O’Leary, the safeties coach. “I do know there’s a number of layers behind it. However yeah, I used to be stunned to see him go away Notre Dame.”
By selecting USC, Bowden was as soon as once more placing out on his personal, strolling away from the world he knew greatest for the promise of constructing one thing larger and higher. Fittingly, it might carry him again to the 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 employees, 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.
Employees members will let you know that Bowden’s influence 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 the whole division.
When USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen approached Bowden throughout a current soccer apply, she discovered him busy scribbling down notes.
“He had 15 issues from that apply that he observed or concepts that he had,” she mentioned.
“He’s the eyes and ears of a program in a manner that basically takes the stress off of everybody. He’s simply been nice throughout the college group, throughout the athletic division, with donors, with former gamers. We couldn’t be extra happy with the progress that he’s made and his workforce has made and the influence that he’s having on USC soccer.”
No element, all the way down to the workforce’s rest room paper, is simply too small.
“His thoughts is at all times going,” mentioned USC secondary coach Doug Belk. “I don’t know if he sleeps at night time.”
Bowden has no hassle seeing the trail forward of him and reveals no indicators of slowing down.
“If I might be right here for perpetually, I’d,” Bowden mentioned. “That’s how a lot this implies to me. I give it some thought each day.”
