Marshall Cherrington says he never had a master plan for all of this, yet it's easy to reflect on every move he's made and understand how it led him to this point, now back at his alma mater as USC's new director of recruiting strategy.

Cherrington was just 17 when he first gravitated to the world of college football recruiting, working as a young reporter for Dawgman.com, covering Washington Huskies prospects while still in high school in the Seattle area.

Once at USC as a student, he knew he wanted to be involved in athletics in some way. He initially thought it might be basketball, but a Facebook ad seeking student managers for the Trojans football program would instead set him on his course.

A connection from within the program later led to a volunteer position at Cal, where he slept on a recruiting staffer's couch while pursuing his entry point into making this a career. After a quick detour back to Washington, he returned to Cal as its director of recruiting strategy the last two years, and now he’s back to the Trojans in the same position.

"I honestly didn't have a master plan in mind. I wanted to really take advantage of each and every day I was in the building, make as many connections as possible, meet as many people in the building as possible," Cherrington said, going in-depth on his return with TrojanSports.com late last week. "It's crazy, Nelson, our janitor for the McKay Center, I remember interacting with him in 2015 and he came by my desk earlier this week and I was like, 'Nelson! What up?' Building relationships with every single person in the building was my biggest thing -- I didn't want to get too caught up in the future. And that's kind of how I live my life -- how can I build my relationships with every single person around me every single day."

That's also a pretty central role to his job back at USC now.

The Trojans have continued to add resources to a recruiting department that was for far too long significantly understaffed relative to the programs USC competes against for prospects. Cherrington arrives as USC director of scouting and recruiting strategy Trey Johnson leaves for a job back at his alma mater Tennessee, but that vacancy is expected to be filled separate from this addition.

Cherrington said he was pursued by USC's director of player personnel Spencer Harris, who was not at USC when Cherrington was last here but perhaps identified with his quick climb in the business. Harris was himself a student manager at his alma mater Washington before rising up in the recruiting department there.

As for Cherrington's role with the Trojans now, he makes the "Swiss Army Knife" comparison.

"I think Spencer would say the same thing, and [it's] a lot of what I was doing at Cal too. The main thing is overseeing the general creative, branding and marketing side of things for the football program -- what narrative are we pushing to the fans, what narrative are we pushing to the recruits, what narrative are we even pushing to everyone in the building. It's those type of things that build culture and your feel around a program, how invested people are into it, all that kind of stuff," Cherrington said. "So overseeing the video side of things, the graphic side of things, but also really having a key gauge on each of the recruits we're going after -- what do we need, what do they want to see, who do they want to talk to, what questions do they have and how can we answer them? And how can we show them as much as we can, especially in this virtual environment, how and why they will succeed at a place like USC and what we can do for them?

"We already know what they can do for us -- we see them on the field, we know what kind of people they are -- but they need to see what we can do for them and the power of this place. This place has a ridiculous amount of power in all industries, all facets of life, and I don't think people necessarily realize what the Trojan Family, Trojan network does for people all over the world and people who come here. ... Really trying to show recruits that, having relationships with recruits and their families, talking with them, being a touchpoint for them in this program and just trying to get the best guys in here and guys who fit this place. I've seen a lot of guys who succeeded here. I was here with Sam [Darnold] and JuJu [Smith-Schuster], Adoree' [Jackson], Zach Banner, all those guys. I think I have great insight on what it takes to succeed here and just trying to tie back into that."

Cherrington says it's "crazy" to reflect back on those days covering Washington recruiting for Dawgman.com when he was still in high school. He said it makes him feel old now, but of course he's not -- he's just 25 as a quick-riser in the business.

"That was kind of my first exposure to just the world of recruiting and all that kind of stuff. I was able to break some stories," he remembers. "... It seems like a long time ago, but I was always just fascinated by where these players came from. Even from the pros down -- how did this guy get to the pros, where did he go to college and how did that college even find him. Just the whole process of finding kids, developing kids, turning them into those high draft picks and guys who succeed at the highest level, that always fascinated me. ...

"Every kid has a different story, and I'd say that's probably my favorite part of the job is just being able to meet all these different kids. Because every kid has some little different [nuance] about him from the next kid."

At USC, Cherrington majored in public relations with a minor in business, and tried out for the student manager squad in the spring of 2015.

Like he said, he had no idea then how or where that opportunity would lead -- just that he wanted to be involved with athletics somehow.

"Over the course of the 2015 season, '16 and '17, I was able to be exposed to a different side of things in the football operations world," he said. "Obviously was working in equipment, but I also was driving kids on official visits, helping out with the recruiting department, kind of got exposed to that side of things. And spring of 2018, I was helping out with Woody [Joseph Wood] and the operations crew, so I kind of got exposed to every area of it. I was able to be the head manager in 2017, which was a fun season with the Cotton Bowl."

When it came time to start thinking about a career, Jared Blank -- USC's former director of football operations under Steve Sarkisian and into Clay Helton's tenure -- set Cherrington up with a contact of his at Cal, director of player personnel Cory Nicol.

"That last semester in 2018 I was kind of just looking around for any kind of job. I wanted to get into sports for sure -- I just didn't know how I was kind of [going to] get into sports," Cherrington said. "He connected me with Cory, and I was able to go up to Cal for that 2018 season. I was a volunteer recruiting assistant, so I wasn't getting paid, I slept on our assistant director of recruiting's couch the entire season, which was fun -- Benji Palu. Really just learned the ins and outs of everything there.

"Cal doesn't have a lot of support up there in terms of staff-wise. There's not a crazy amount of people in the building, so I was making graphics for kids, and I was talking to them on the phone, talking to their parents, but also operations-wise too helping on roadtrips, handing out meals, all that kind of stuff. ... I really was able to take it from cradle to grave -- I'd watch film, I'd identify a kid, get him on the phone, get his transcripts, talk to his high school coach, talk to his teacher, make him some graphics."

After that season, Cherrington briefly returned to Seattle to serve as a player personnel analyst at Washington making part-time pay while living with his parents. When a more permanent spot opened back up at Cal, he started retracing his steps backwards through Berkeley and eventually back here to USC.

Now settled in with the Trojans again, he reflected on those last several years, starting with taking the volunteer role at Cal while believing it was the first step to greater things.

"I think it goes back to betting on yourself. I'm always going to bet on myself rather than someone else. I'm not going to leave fate up to someone else to decide what's going to happen to me," he said. "I knew it was a foot in the door at a Power 5 program that had a lot of areas for me to do a lot of things. I thought it was a really good situation just to be able to do a little bit of everything because they needed help. I was going to bet on myself knowing I was going to do a good job there, have my hands in a lot of things. So that gave me confidence. ...

"[USC] was in the back of my mind, you could say that, but I was loving Cal. I really wasn't thinking about it, I thought we were having great success at Cal, and especially for all the circumstances that are involved for that school, and I was loving it. Like I've said before, I just try to focus on things one day at a time."

In recounting how one decision led into the next from start to finish, he added, "A little bit of a journey to get back to this place, but I wouldn't change it. It's been good."

Cherrington has a unique perspective on USC recruiting, having watched the department operate from the inside at the start of Helton’s tenure with the program, and also in observing it from the outside in more recent years while at Cal and Washington.

He, of course, had come to the same conclusion as most anyone covering or around USC recruiting in any way in recent years.

"It was very obvious of where USC should be just in the hierarchy of college football and what they were working with," Cherrington said. "It's super impressive that 'SC was able to win a Rose Bowl and get to the Cotton Bowl with those kind of resources that they had at that time, and I think you see the Clemson's, the Alabama's, all those kind of schools and it's like, those guys have way more resources than we do, way more people in the building. So it's been a total shift in it, a total change and all the people in the building now know what it takes to be where we should be and where we belong in the general hierarchy of things."

That credit goes to athletic director Mike Bohn and senior associate AD Brandon Sosna, who recognized pretty immediately upon arriving last November/December that USC was lagging way behind in resources.

It was the day after USC's humbling loss to Iowa in the Holiday Bowl to end the 2019 season that Sosna had a long meeting with Wood, now USC's assistant AD for football/chief of staff, to identify what the program needed. That led to a subsequent meeting with Harris to strategize how best to bolster the recruiting department.

USC, of course, had tumbled all the way to No. 71 in the Rivals recruiting rankings -- last in the Pac-12 -- in the 2020 class (which was wrapping up around that same time). Much of that was due to coming off a 5-7 season the year before and widespread speculation and questions about Helton's future. But in terms of the recruiting staff itself, the Trojans went through that 2020 recruiting cycle with five full-time recruiting personnel -- Harris, assistant AD/director of player development Gavin Morris, Johnson, director of on-campus recruiting Kelsea Winkle and director of creative media Ryan Miller. (Plus grad assistants, interns and the occasional overlapping help from other football support staff.)

While Miller and Winkle are no longer on staff and Johnson just left for Tennessee, the department has effectively doubled in size over the last year and change.

USC promoted recruiting graduate assistant Drew Fox to assistant director of player personnel to provide the staff another full-time scouting eye. Armond Hawkins Jr. was hired in the new role of director of high school relations. And the Trojans finally joined the creative media arms race in college football by hiring football-specific video producers for the first time, replacing Miller's position (with Alex Verdugo) and launching BLVD Studios in partnership with the creative team at J1S. Cherrington now comes in as director of recruiting strategy, and again, he's not simply replacing Johnson as USC still plans to hire a director of recruiting operations (and another graphic designer.)

USC also just hired Bryan Carrington, who was Texas’ well-respected director of recruiting, as an offensive analyst, where he’ll segue more into the coaching side of things but also no doubt be heavily involved in recruiting.

“From the outside, it's just increased and got so much better in the last year. I talk to Gavin all the time, even when I was at Cal, and just you see it from the outside,” Cherrington said. “And even in that 2019 class, 2020, you see they're down years admittedly. You're still getting good players, guys you like and believe in, but just the commitment from the administration, the commitment from everyone these past couple years and seeing it over the past year has been super impressive -- just from the outside looking in. ...

“There's a true, I think, investment by the administration in the past year. Even I was talking to guys who worked here when I was a student, it's like, 'Man, we didn't have that kind of investment when we were there.' So I think it's really increased the urgency, the aggressiveness, all that kind of stuff -- even looking from the outside and what they've done with the media team and all the stuff the fans see. It's just gotten so much better over the past year, and that was another enticing part of it for me, being a part of that and having the resources to do it at the highest level."

USC created fresh recruiting momentum over this last year while landing at No. 8 in the Rivals rankings after National Signing Day last week. They signed the top player in the state in 5-star DE Korey Foreman (No. 3 overall national prospect) and already have a commitment from the top 2022 in-state prospect (and No. 2 national recruit) in 5-star CB Domani Jackson.

The Trojans are hoping to build on that momentum even further moving forward while continuing to bolster the staff that does much of the behind-the-scenes work to make that happen.

So, for all the familiarities that have greeted Cherrington on his return, just as significant have been the changes.

“The nice thing is for me, looking at it from the outside too, you're always following your alma mater. It doesn't matter where you are, so I was always following and obviously had a lot of familiar faces in the building, which was awesome to see. But a lot of new ones too, new energy and a new way of doing things,” Cherrington said. “It's been awesome so far just to learn from those guys -- your Donte Williams of the world, your Craig Naivar's, Graham [Harrell], all those guys have been really good so far. And you're out of the building so you don't really know how the operation's going, so I came in here and was interested to see how it would be. You read so much stuff in the media and how it's going on -- good and bad -- but it's been awesome so far."