Done Deal: Notre Dame Announces The Addition Of ‘James Blanchard’ To Their Squad
When Joey McGuire took over in Lubbock, he organized his coaching staff to include a fully-staffed player personnel department. To this day, it provides the ability of the director of personnel to offer a scholarship without needing to confirm with the head coach beforehand. The man who has seen the growth, development, and success of the Red Raider’s player personnel department is general manager James Blanchard. His name has been skyrocketing in the industry and it was only a matter of time before a blue-blood program came seeking his services. It also would not be the first time Notre Dame was interested in him. However, news broke Friday that despite the national championship runner-up calling, McGuire’s (and the administration’s) efforts, Blanchard turned down Notre Dame to stay in Lubbock for the 2025 season.
James Blanchard Turns Down Notre Dame, Staying At Texas Tech
Who Is James Blanchard?
When McGuire began putting his staff together in November 2022, Blanchard was the first person McGuire hired. He has had unprecedented authority when it came to roster building. With this great responsibility, Blanchard flourished. Before 2022, Texas Tech has only signed two top-30 high school classes since 2000. In two of his three full recruiting cycles, Blanchard has been an integral part of securing the 28th and 24th nationally ranked classes in ’23 and ’24. Blanchard has played a huge role in bringing in one of the top transfer classes, this season. This top-of-personnel production out of Texas Tech has never been seen before. As a result, Blanchard has become the poster child of modern-day recruiting.
Blanchard Turns Down Notre Dame Continues To Be Evidence Of “Good Problems”
Marcus Freeman has done his own personnel upgrading in South Bend since Brian Kelly left for LSU. After all, Kelly made strong remarks about how he couldn’t recruit well enough to that part of the country to compete for a national championship. Freeman clearly has had his eye on Texas Tech’s General Manager for quite some time now. McGuire already had to replace both his offensive and defensive coordinators. By all off-season accounts, he nailed both those hires. Of course, we won’t really know until the season gets going. However, McGuire has seemingly cleared the first major hurdle in his Texas Tech coaching tenure.
According to ESPN, Blanchard signed a new three-year contract with Texas Tech. The total value of the new deal is $1.575 million. This makes him one of the highest-paid general managers in the sports. In a statement, McGuire had this to say:
“We’re excited James and his family have chosen to remain Red Raiders and continue the work we started not long ago in building a consistent program that can compete for Big 12 titles. We’re much closer today than we first arrived, and I look forward to continuing to work with James on further building out this roster.”
As Blanchard turns down Notre Dame, it is abundantly clear that Texas Tech has pushed all of its chips into the 2025 season.
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