/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dmn/LWUT6WFG7FG3VDEQJKVV674QVI.jpg?ssl=1 "Plan to link Texas ERCOT electric grid to southeastern U.S. states is in the works")
Since forever, Texans have proudly proclaimed that our state electricity grid run by ERCOT did not need or want to connect to the national grids. We don’t want no stinkin’ federal regulators putting their noses into our business.
Quietly, though, behind the scenes, state regulators have worked for more than a decade with Pattern Energy, a private company, to create the “Southern Spirit Transmission.”
The goal is a 400-mile transmission line from the Texas/Louisiana border, through Louisiana and into Mississippi to connect with grids in the southeastern United States.
Power could flow into or out of Texas, depending on the need.
Federal regulators would have no jurisdiction over the project because of the way it’s set up. Also, the electricity flow would be direct current, not the usual alternating current.
In a local angle, Garland Power & Light is part of the plan because the lines would connect to Texas in a partnership with Garland. Garland announced its participation back in 2011. The utility would operate a substation on the Texas border and 30 miles of transmission lines leading to it.
Your cost? Consumers would not – repeat, not – pay for this $2.6 billion project.
A projected schedule shows construction could start in 2026 and end by 2029. Right-of-way work is being done now.
This project, a groundbreaking one if pieces fall into place, has received little public attention. The Watchdog learned about it after Watchdog Nation member Bill Loftin of Plano noticed its mention in a Louisiana parish newsletter he subscribes to.
According to the latest issue of the Red River Parish Journal, leaders in the northwest Louisiana community heard from a representative of Pattern asking for public support of 21 miles of transmission lines across the parish.
Residents asked about environmental impact and the effect on farmers, wildlife and others. At one point, the Pattern official threatened the use of eminent domain to seize needed land.
Residents also criticized the project for its lack of local benefits. No power would be used in Louisiana.
“There is no person in Louisiana to call if someone has a problem,” someone said. “There is no entity in Louisiana that has jurisdiction over this company.”
Others complained about the huge transmission towers, which plans show could go as high as 450 feet.
The parish postponed a decision.
Participating communities will benefit from creation of 3,000 construction jobs and millions of dollars in local impact, including property tax revenue, according to the company.
Pattern says its goal is to increase the diversity of its power sources “to help drive down rates for electricity customers, especially in times of high energy demand.”
Direct current, as opposed to alternating current, is more efficient, leaves a smaller footprint and involves fewer wires to transmit the same amount of power, the company states on its website.
In the meantime, Pattern is trying to build goodwill in pass-through communities. Headlines on its website announce “Southern Spirit is Supporting Local Food Bank” and “Giving Back is a Year-Long Commitment.”
Applications have been submitted to Louisiana and Mississippi regulators. The Texas Public Utility Commission has ordered ERCOT to present updates every six months.
Texas already has several small direct current connections with Mexico and the western and eastern U.S. grids, but nothing like this planned project.
The ERCOT grid is called an “electrical island” because of its independence from other grids. Since we don’t cross state lines, Texas utilities aren’t forced to deal with the feds.
In this case, federal involvement is limited because the company was able to “thread the needle of the federal requirements,” Pattern lobbyist Michael Jewell told Houston TV station KHOU in 2021.
Even with the Southern Spirit in operation, it would not have provided enough power to prevent blackouts during the 2021 ice storm catastrophe. But it would have provided power for a few hundred thousand homes.
In a November filing before the PUC, Pattern states that once the project comes online, total import capacity “would still be less than 4% of ERCOT’s current peak resource needs.”
ERCOT and the PUC have details to iron out. Approval is needed in Louisiana and Mississippi.
And then there are those communities that must be swayed. They don’t want no stinkin’ out-of-towners putting ugly towers across their land.
Who can blame them?
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The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily halted a lower court order that threw out Texas’ redrawn congressional maps in time for next month’s candidate filing deadline — as the state and its legal opponents square off on whether the maps were driven by politics or race.
Lawyers for Texas had asked the court earlier Friday to issue a stay and effectively let Texas return — at least for now — to the maps it passed over the summer, which redrew five Democratic House seats to make them more GOP-friendly.
Justice Samuel Alito granted the state’s request for an administrative stay, which means the lower court ruling is now on hold until the Supreme Court takes further action.
Texas is asking the high court to stay the lower court ruling on a longer-term basis by Dec. 1, noting that the deadline for candidates to file for next year’s primary elections is Dec. 8. He directed the plaintiffs who sued Texas to file their response by Monday afternoon.
The state’s redistricting push set of a nationwide effort to redraw House maps ahead of next year’s midterms, with California shifting five congressional districts to the left, and Missouri and North Carolina each shifting a seat to the right. President Trump has pushed other GOP-led states to take similar steps.
But earlier this week, a panel of federal judges blocked Texas from using its new maps in a 2-1 ruling. The court’s opinion, penned by Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, sided with plaintiffs who argued the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The lower court pointed to a majority-White Democratic district that it said should have changed more if the process was driven purely by politics, not race. It also argued that some state officials, like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, seemed to move in response to a letter by a top Justice Department official warning them to redraw four existing districts that the federal government viewed as illegal “coalition” districts, where non-Hispanic White voters are in the minority, but no racial group has a majority.
In Friday’s request to the Supreme Court, the state of Texas pushed back on these arguments, asserting that the redistricting process was entirely partisan and wasn’t motivated by race.
“From the start, everyone recognized that the purpose of Texas’s redistricting effort was Republican political advantage,” the state wrote, quoting several elected Democrats who criticized the new maps on political grounds.
Texas said the lower court ruling “erroneously rests on speculation and inferences of bad faith.” And it said the state GOP’s chief mapmaker worked with data on partisanship rather than race.
In some cases, the state of Texas cited a dissent from the lower court ruling written by Judge Jerry Smith. The Reagan appointee drew headlines earlier this week for his fiery opinion, which used the phrase “I dissent” 16 times, called Brown an “unskilled magician,” said the majority opinion would deserve an “F” on a law school exam and accused the other judges of improperly leaving him out of the process.
The State of Texas also argued the lower court ruling could cause “chaos” since it was issued during the candidate filing period for next year’s races.
The No. 17 Texas Longhorns need a win on Saturday against the Arkansas Razorbacks for a multitude of reasons.
The hopes for the College Football Playoff hang on by a thread, with an opportunity to keep that thread intact with a win over one of its oldest rivals — a team riding an eight-game losing streak heading into Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Some of those losses could have easily gone the other way; six of eight decided by one score, including a one-point loss against LSU a week ago.
The Razorback’ bring one of the nation’s most potent offenses, led by the dynamic playmaker Taylen Green at quarterback. The problem is that offense is shackled to one of the nation’s worst defenses, giving up 32 points per game.
With the recent defensive struggles for the Longhorns, this could very well turn into a shootout, with both quarterbacks putting up monster numbers. Will Texas have what it takes to get the win over the Hogs in Austin?
Livestream: ESPNUnlimited
Radio: Texassports.com. Broadcasts are also available on Sirius 132, XM 199, and App Ch. 953
Weather: Mostly Sunny, 76 degrees, wind NNE 8 mph
Editor’s note: This article is part of our GM Spotlight series, introducing readers to general managers who occupy a relatively new and increasingly important job for college football teams.
A decade ago, James Blanchard was posting on college football message boards to get high school recruits noticed by Texas programs. Now he’s the general manager of a top-10 Texas Tech team gunning to win its first Big 12 championship and make the College Football Playoff.
Blanchard, the architect of the “open checkbook” transfer portal class that cost eight figures as part of a $25 million overall roster budget, has become one of the most prominent GMs in the sport. The journey took a relentless drive, a lot of sacrifice and a little bit of luck.
In the mid-2010s, he was cutting highlight tapes and promoting Southeast Texas recruits to help them earn scholarships. He developed enough of a reputation in fan forums and social media that when Matt Rhule arrived at Baylor, some fans on Twitter suggested to him that he add Blanchard to his staff.
Rhule and then-Baylor director of player personnel Evan Cooper noticed and initiated a relationship with Blanchard. They liked the players he sent them. One day when Rhule was in Beaumont to see a recruit, he invited Blanchard to lunch and offered him a job in the scouting department.
“It was a dream come true,” Blanchard said.
The problem? Blanchard had just bought a home for his wife and kids, and the Baylor job would pay him $50,000 less than what he was making outside of football.
Determined to chase a dream, Blanchard gambled and took it anyway. He sent most of the money back home to his family and spent some nights in Waco sleeping in his Chrysler 300 or on the couch in Baylor defensive line coach Frank Okam’s office.
The initial payoff came three years later when Rhule took a job with the Carolina Panthers and hired Blanchard as a pro scout. But Blanchard was lured back to Baylor after a season when Dave Aranda doubled his salary. Throughout his time at Baylor, Blanchard connected with Joey McGuire, then an assistant coach with the Bears. They saw eye-to-eye on player evaluations. When McGuire landed the Texas Tech job in November 2021, Blanchard was his first hire, landing in Lubbock with McGuire on mega booster Cody Campbell’s jet.
McGuire promised Blanchard full control of personnel, which was unconventional in college football. Texas Tech turned in consecutive top-30 recruiting classes for the first time in a decade. This offseason, with the help of massive resources spearheaded by Campbell, signed a transfer class that has the No. 6 Red Raiders in the thick of the conference and Playoff race.
Of his path, Blanchard said “It’s a ’30 for 30′ movie.”
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve spoken often about the influence Matt Rhule and Evan Cooper had on you at Baylor in shaping your personnel philosophy. What about them made the biggest impression on you?
Just the structure of everything. Matt Rhule was one of the first ones (to have a GM) … Coop didn’t have the title of general manager, but Coop was like our general manager. The position coaches and coordinators had say on who would come in the building, who we would offer and who we would take commitments from, but Coop had the final say so outside of coach Rhule. If Coop told coach Rhule, ‘We need to take this guy, I know what everybody else is saying, but trust me, dawg, take him,’ then the guy was coming to Baylor.
What was your NFL experience like in Carolina with Rhule?
I would do scouting reports on the other teams we played, our potential free agent targets, scout our own roster, then would assist with setting up the draft board. It was like a master’s degree crash course in how to build teams. Learned from two great guys there, Marty Hurney (then the Panthers’ GM) and Pat Stewart (then the Panthers’ director of player personnel).
They just taught me how to have a more refined eye, how to be more detailed in describing what I was talking about, what to look for at a higher level and then just roster configuration. Marty was gracious enough to always have an open-door policy. My office was right next to our salary cap guy, Samir (Suleiman), and he would let me just sit in and listen to things. And at the time, I’m just listening to him because I’m thinking I want to be an NFL GM. Had no idea that knowing and listening to some of those conversations would help me thrive as a college football GM.
What do you look for in the portal that applies what you learned from the NFL?
The big thing is production over potential and body types. Movement skills, body types and do they fit into your scheme? There’s a lot of good players out there, but some of these guys don’t fit into people’s schemes. At some point, you’re just collecting players and it’s like, you have no idea how this guy’s going to fit into your building.
After returning to Baylor, you went with Joey McGuire to Texas Tech. What made you ultimately decide to go with him?
Joey is just a great human, first and foremost — him and (his wife) Debbie, the things they do and how they treat people. When I first got to Baylor and took a big pay cut, that December, I didn’t have enough money to get everything (for my wife and kids) for Christmas. And I was really stressed out about it, the lifestyle change, that I had put my wife in this situation while I chased this crazy dream. She was still in college, so I’m trying to pay for her college and the mortgage while dealing with this $50,000 pay cut.
And I don’t know how, but Joey McGuire (found out) and comes into my office one day and says, “Hey, here’s some money for Christmas,” and he handed me an envelope with like two grand in it. And I’m like, “Hey, coach, I can’t pay you back because I’m broke as s— right now.” And he said, “You ain’t gotta pay me back. One day you’re gonna be on your feet and just make sure you take care of somebody else.” That two grand is how I paid for my kid’s Christmas that year. And that meant the world to me.
So whenever he got to calling me and texting me that (the Texas Tech job) might be a reality, “I need you to come with me,” shoot, it was a no-brainer.
When you got to Texas Tech, you guys went heavy on measurables and track times in recruiting your first few classes. Is that still the case?
100 percent.
Are you still as aggressive with early scholarship offers as you were then?
No, we’ve slowed down a little bit. Junior and senior evaluations are way more important now that you’re allocating big money to some of these young men. This might be the slowest I’ve ever been (to offer). Going forward, we might take smaller high school classes, so we’ll see.
What prompted the shift to heavily utilizing the transfer portal?
Just doing research and seeing how effective it is. In 2023, Florida State and (GM Darrick Yray) were one of the first ones to crack the code in the portal. That portal class they put together (was impressive). … Then in 2024, Colorado did it at a high level. Deion (Sanders) went and got some real ballplayers to put around Shedeur and they went from four wins to nine wins. Ohio State, one of the meccas, they went out and signed 10-12 NFL-caliber guys (in the portal) and had a great College Football Playoff run.
After looking at that, I said, “OK, if we do this in the portal the right way, we can dominate the Big 12.” Because I feel like a lot of people were still iffy about (using the portal that way). And with the help of (director of player personnel) Brian Nance, (scouting director) Sean Kenney and (assistant scouting director) Wesley Harwell, we were able to put it on display in a big way.
Texas Tech is 10-1 and in good position for a Big 12 title run and College Football Playoff berth. Safe to say that there aren’t any regrets about it?
None. We should have done more.
Everyone’s so competitive in this space and most schools don’t want to say what their roster budget is or how much they paid a guy. Why have you guys been comfortable being so open about what you were doing?
I think because we saw early, once all those guys got on campus, that we hit not only on the player, but the person. Hitting on both was so critically important to us. … And it was apparent to everybody that, “Oh s—, this is about to be really good.” Coach McGuire, Cody Campbell and everybody felt comfortable. I think deep down inside, everybody knew how good we could be.
What do you say to people who say, “Oh they spent $7 million on the defensive line” or “They spent too much on their portal class?”
I would say that we have the best D-line in college football. … I think all these teams out here, they spend tons of money year-in, year-out on high school recruiting classes and that’s fine. But I think we’ve shown the world a little bit that we did it better than everybody in the portal historically. I think people are going to look back and say, “This is the greatest single portal class in the history of college football.” And we did it at such a high level that, this one portal class, probably outweighs — at every school except maybe two or three — five years of high school recruiting that they did. And it took us less time and less money than it took over those five years.
Stanford transfer David Bailey leads the FBS in sacks. (Michael C. Johnson / Imagn Images)
So where do you go from here? Because I would imagine other schools may try to replicate your strategy.
I just think we’re better right now. People will try to replicate it, but you’ve got to be all-in. Our coaching staff is all-in. If I go to (defensive coordinator) Shiel Wood and I say “We’ve got to get this Lee Hunter guy, I’m telling you to trust me on it,” he’s going to trust me. Just like I’m going to trust him if he (feels strongly). The synergy in the building with the culture, the players, the coaches, Joey McGuire has it running on all cylinders.
How much will a baseline championship roster cost in the next year or two?
About $20-$30 million. And that’s dictated by how close you are to blue blood status and recent success. The further away you are, the higher your number has to be. Now that Texas Tech is winning, a guy that we might be able to get for $600,000, if you’re a program that hasn’t won at a high level, you might have to pay $800,000 to get that guy. What do you have to pay somebody to go to an unproven concept?
How much of that hinges upon programs’ ability to operate beyond the revenue-sharing cap?
If you don’t have legit NIL opportunities going on, then your program is going to fall behind. You’ve got to have the NIL opportunities to compete at the top. Now if that’s not your goal, then don’t worry about it. But if your goal is to compete with the top echelon, to be one of the top 10 programs in the country, then yeah, you’re going to have to have those third party NIL deals. It’s non-negotiable.
Does Texas Tech intend to remain a market leader in what it takes to acquire talent?
I believe so. I don’t think we’re going anywhere anytime soon. I think we are going to be aggressive and innovative. I wouldn’t count Red Raider nation out.
Can Texas Tech win a national championship in the next five years?
One thousand percent. We’ve got a shot to win it this year. If we don’t, the proof of concept is there. Over the next five years, I think you’re going to see Texas Tech fight, scratch and claw like hell to kick that door in. I wouldn’t bet against this community, this university, this administration, this coaching staff, our donors and board of regents. This isn’t a one-hit wonder. We’re about to go on a run, and this is Year 1 of it.
The GM Spotlight series is part of a partnership with T. Rowe Price. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
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