How the USC Trojans landed the top 2026 football recruiting class - ESPN

LOS ANGELES — It took Lincoln Riley and Jen Cohen more than nine months to make the hire.

In early 2024, USC's head coach and athletic director set out to find a general manager, eyeing a figure who could modernize the Trojans' front office operation for college football's money era.

They interviewed a vast pool of candidates, rising personnel stars across both the Power 4 and NFL ranks. Texas Tech general manager James Blanchard turned down the job. So did Alabama's Courtney Morgan. So Riley and Cohen's search continued into the fall of 2024, dragging all the way through the program's 7-6 finish in Riley's third season in charge.

«We probably talked more about that [search] than any other single topic in the years that we've been here together,» Riley told ESPN earlier this month. «We both knew how important it was to find the right fit and to equip that person with a great staff.»

«Our patience has been rewarded,» he added.

Eventually, USC honed in on a brash, intensely energetic 30-year-old with front office pedigree and a grasp of the sport's evolving landscape: Notre Dame's Chad Bowden.

The son of Jim Bowden, formerly the general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, Bowden was the University of Cincinnati's director of recruiting when the Bearcats reached the College Football Playoff in 2021. At Notre Dame from 2022 to '25, he'd successfully overhauled the program's personnel setup alongside Marcus Freeman and built the roster that played Ohio State for the national championship earlier this year on Jan. 20.

Four days later, USC lured Bowden away on a multiyear deal worth upward of $1 million annually, per ESPN sources. In less than a year, he's constructed one of the nation's deepest 2026 recruiting classes, restoring