Less than a week after taking over as USC’s general manager, Chad Bowden has made a move sure to send reverberations throughout the Big Ten Conference.
Multiple sources tell FootballScoop that Bowden is snagging Illinois director of player personnel Dre Brown into an executive role in Lincoln Riley’s USC Trojans organization.
Brown is expected to fill a top role of Executive Director of Personnel and Scouting, per sources familiar with his exit from the Illini program.
It’s a stunning blow to Illinois, who loses both a former standout running back in Brown and the architect of the program’s best recruiting classes under Bret Bielema.
The Illini just got the sixth commitment for their 2026 class with Brown at the helm - two months earlier than Illinois has ever received its sixth commitment in the Bielema era.
Illinois currently has a consensus top-30 class that’s ranked as highly as No. 16 nationally by Rivals.com.
It's just-signed 2025 class stood as the highest-rated per-prospect score in Illini program history in the recruiting rankings era, which stretches approximately 25 years. Per 247Sports, Illinois signees in its most recent class averaged 86.85 per person and featured a group with a projected 13 January enrollees, also one of the deepest groups of midyear signees in program history.
Brown, who earned All-Big Ten honors during his senior season as a player, worked previously at Tennessee before Bowden hired him away from the Vols in mid-summer 2021. He remained a consistent cog in Notre Dame's recruiting operations until last May, when Bielema and Illinois brought Brown home into the role of DPP.
Also this week, USC hired away from Zaire Turner from Notre Dame, where she had been the DPP under Bowden and in Marcus Freeman's program.