LOS ANGELES – The key is the first phone to establish a Bluetooth connection.
For he – or she – controls the music, navigation and even which ringtone thunders through the three-row, eight-passenger SUV snaking the West Coast from Palos Verdes, California, to USC’s John McKay Center and back home.
If Zaire Turner commands that initial connection, then the ringtone is the “Avengers” theme, and it fits this mismatched band of college football personnel experts.
And roommates.
Chad Bowden, USC’s centerpiece in an offseason personnel investment with scarcely an equal in college football, is the new general manager of Lincoln Riley’s program resting on the periphery of powerhouse status.
Bowden is surrounded again by familiar faces: Turner, his former director of player personnel, is now USC’s assistant athletics director of recruiting operations; Dre Brown, another former Irish personnel member, is executive director of scouting and personnel, leaving his alma mater, Illinois, to rejoin the roster assemblers, and Max Stienecker is executive director of player personnel after departing his role as general manager in Luke Fickell’s Wisconsin program.
For now, the quartet share office space on campus and living arrangements away from it.
Bowden and his wife, Ava, have their home open to new hires to assist the relocation process, streamline communication and, let’s face it, maximize time talking with recruits, coaches and developing new or reestablishing previous relationships with potential Name, Image and Likeness assets.
“Because I truly do love them and it’s not something I take lightly,” Bowden, like Stienecker a Cincinnati grad, says of opening his home. “The relationships with people that work together with me, I want them to understand that we’re in it together and I’m here for them. They know that.
“Max worked with me eight years ago, Dre and Z at Notre Dame; we’ve enjoyed having them at the house. It’s because we really do love each other, and it’s real relationships. It’s not yes-men, yes-women relationships. We’re all striving to be great. I think it’s just a culture of how our front office will be and everybody is a part of it.”
Adds Turner, a Texas Tech grad and former 247Sports 30 under 30 honoree now at USC after spurning the Irish’s attempts to retain her, “You have to love the people you work with; you definitely have to like them. But to live with them, you definitely have to love them. And I love this team.”
In that regard, Bowden’s approach mimics that of Riley and his wife, Caitlin, following the opening of their home to the Bowdens during this transition still reverberating through college athletics. Bowden is FootballScoop’s reigning top personnel executive, with runaway voting from his peers, and until now traces his recruiting arc alongside that of Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman.
Not anymore.
“I mean I’d seen obviously the job, up front, the job they had done building the roster,” Riley, overlooking USC’s expanding football facility from his office balcony, tells FootballScoop. “We had a couple of mutual friends in the business that initially connected us.
“Right away, I figured out how passionate and how much he believed in this place. Not just what it is today but what it’s getting ready to be. When we started talking philosophies and all of that, it was like, it felt like we had been working together for years. We saw things the same way, the future of college football the same way and strategies. It was pretty easy, honestly.”
Bowden deploys all the subtlety of an elephant to an ant in his machinations. He is bent on erecting a USC fence around the state of California’s top prep talent, barnstorming his message via media channels and tailoring it with individual meetings among a Los Angeles scene eager to reembrace the Trojans.
This Friday features bits of all of the above: morning and evening meetings with NIL movers and shakers, the latter some 73 stories above downtown L.A. atop a posh hotel offering sweeping panoramic views to the Hollywood hills and back, as well as an appearance on an USC podcast in which Bowden declares of Riley, “the best recruiting coach I’ve been around … a guy who holistically can do it all,” and individual time with Riley to discuss recruiting, impending commitments and actualizing the recruiting strategies.
Already in the weeks following the arrival of Bowden, USC nabs commitments from 247Sports Composite four-star, top-55 prospect defensive lineman Simota Katoanga, previously a heavy Notre Dame lean, as well as four-star, top-200 quarterback Jonas Williams as part of the sport’s early No. 1 class in the 2026 rankings.
“Obviously having worked with Chad at Cincinnati and seeing what we were able to accomplish there, then watching from afar and seeing what Chad and the team were able to accomplish at Notre Dame, I know how special he is and personally, I think he’s the best in the business,” says Stienecker, at USC after rebuffing previous opportunities to depart Wisconsin. “Knowing what he can do at a place like USC was really very intriguing to me.
“To learn and grow with him, but also to know: It’s USC. You see the place, the resources, the history, the tradition, the brand; they’ve got everything here to pursue a national championship. A lot to like to here.”
Turner states it much more bluntly.
“The real reason is I think because I trust Chad; I trust what he can do, I know what he can do,” she says. “He’s like a mad, evil genius. You know that whatever he wants to execute is going to be the best version of him, but it translates to everything else.
“He’s so genuine and he cares so much about his staff. Even the players at Notre Dame, even if they didn’t come to Notre Dame, he still cared about where they were in their life and their career. He still follows those people.”
In seeking to deliver USC its first-ever College Football Playoff appearance, Riley is finding an appreciation in Bowden’s approach, which essentially is to see a “Stay off the grass” sign and tramp through it in golf spikes.
“He gets stuff done,” Riley says, repeating himself for emphasis. “He gets stuff done. Some people sit around the office all day and talk about this or that, but there’s not like that many results. He’s about process, about getting things done and putting people in positions where they can go to work and do their thing.
“It’s very just action-based is the way I can describe it. It’s been everything I could hope for in the beginning, and we’ve built a great team around him and built a heck of a department. I think he’s got a lot of confidence in the people around him and what we’re doing here.”
Thus, the process continues. Forget that it is Saturday morning. Breakfast beckons 30 minutes away on a sidewalk café in Manhattan Beach.
It’s an NIL opportunity on the surface but, more importantly, Bowden explains, an opportunity to continue pressing the local flesh like an election-year politician, tenaciously excavating relationships with trainers, coaches and anyone to help spread the vision of the USC gospel.
They are going to sign the largest-ever high school recruiting class for the Trojans program – engineering a class with the ability to ink well more than 30 prep standouts – and already boast seven in-state commitments from their 11 early pledges.
“The people I’ve met with are all within compliance but it will ramp up even more so when we can have high school coaches up here, people in the city up here for practice,” says Bowden, a former high school defensive assistant coach and junior varsity defensive coordinator in the Cincinnati area who calls USC’s Weston Zernechel “a future G.M.” and among the key pieces in the transition.
“I’ve been in a Suburban driving around fundraising all week. Downtown L.A. and all over the area, and I’ve said the same thing to all these guys: If you don’t believe in USC football now, that’s ok. But I’ve told every donor, including maybe ones with some distaste from the last 20 years, send me the address and I’ll go visit them. I’m still coming for our fans to believe in this program and where it’s going.
“I want everybody to believe in this program.”
That belief is growing organically. After the early-morning breakfast and on the heels of unloading their slow-arriving belongings from South Bend, Ind., Bowden & Co. depart for an early-evening cookout at the home of Zach Hanson, USC’s assistant head coach and offensive line coach.
It’s a family affair as the Hansons open their home. Bowden’s crew arrives with an and-1, quarterbacks coach Luke Huard brings his family, Riely visits, launching into a discussion on his top Air Jordans, and neighbors wind through the festivities as well.
The scene mirrors the image lingering from USC’s process of hiring Bowden away from Notre Dame.
“When Chad was making his decision on whether to come out to USC, one of the easiest or most comforting things to me was everyone in the administration kept asking, ‘How’s Ava? Is she OK? What does she need?’,” says Ava Bowden, a former NCAA Division I soccer athlete and practicing attorney. “That was not just Lincoln; that was everyone. But Lincoln specifically said something to us that stuck with me; he said, ‘My wife is a rockstar. If Ava needs anything, all she has to do is ask. Caitlin will take care of it.’ That was very encouraging for a girl coming from the Midwest out to the Coast.
“I get out here, and she exceeded every expectation. Even though Lincoln said she’s a rockstar, man, she’s a rockstar.”
The evening wraps up between 8-9; fatigue of this breathtaking month-plus journey settling in and Sunday hardly a day of rest.
There are more meetings on the agenda for Bowden, who doesn’t miss an opportunity to extol the amenities of the new Bloom Football Performance Center, several months into its construction and still on target for its opening in June 2026.
“It’s going to be the most elite facility that I’ve ever seen in college football,” Bowden says, sharpening his talking points before his next engagement. “We’re going to have pickleball courts, sand volleyball, the grilling decks are unreal; a cornhole competition area.
“I just came from a place that’s building an incredible facility, and this is on a whole other level.”
Everything, it seems, is mission focused. Well, Riley laughs at an early incident.
The Bowden/USC personnel compound sits at the base of a hillside and in close proximity to Riley’s on the bluff.
“It’s literally like 200 yards from my house, so we’re very, very close; in fact, he lived with us before they got this place,” Riley shares. “Probably the best one is, Dre’s wife (Lindsy) is there working while they’re here on campus, and their electricity, everything, just goes off; she thinks it’s a power-outage.
“I think it’s just that Chad forgot to pay the electric bill or have it set up. So, they got no power. He’s up there getting recruits, but they got no damn power at their house.”
So, maybe that Bluetooth connection is just the second-most important; establishing electricity is a must.
