Texas Tech football GM James Blanchard staying with Red Raiders after Notre Dame pursuit

Texas Tech general manager James Blanchard has turned down an offer to assume the same role at Notre Dame and will remain with the Red Raiders, the school announced on Friday.

Blanchard, whom Notre Dame heavily pursued in the last week to fill the void left by Chad Bowden, received a three-year contract to stay in Lubbock through the 2027 season with a total value of $1.575 million over the three years, according to a school source, to keep him among the highest-paid front office staffers in the country.

“The success of our personnel department led by James Blanchard has obviously been noticed nationally with the significant interest he continues to generate annually,” Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire said in a statement. “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 when we first arrived, and I look forward to continuing to work with James on further building out this roster.”

Notre Dame hosted Blanchard for a visit over the weekend and received a lucrative offer from the Fighting Irish. Blanchard is considered one of the top GMs in the sport and has a level of autonomy and authority over Texas Tech’s recruiting operation that most Power 4 GMs don’t.

Blanchard was McGuire’s first hire when he became Tech’s head coach in November 2021. The two worked together at Baylor, where Blanchard was hired by Matt Rhule in 2019. He spent two seasons at Baylor and had a one-year stint with the Carolina Panthers sandwiched in between.

Texas Tech signed back-to-back top-30 recruiting classes in Blanchard’s first two years with the program, only the second time the Red Raiders have achieved that in the modern recruiting era. This winter, Texas Tech heavily attacked the transfer portal, signing the No. 3 transfer class in the country according to 247Sports.

Before this season, Blanchard signed a two-year contract that would pay him $400,000 annually, which was one of the top GM salaries in the sport. Alabama awarded its GM, Courtney Morgan, a three-year deal in August with an $825,000 annual salary, resetting the market for the position. Bowden is believed to have received an even more lucrative deal than Morgan’s to join USC.

Why Blanchard was an attractive GM candidate

It’s easy to look at Texas Tech’s 23-16 record over the last three years and be underwhelmed, but it’s worth noting that that’s the best three-year stretch the Red Raiders have enjoyed since the Mike Leach era. This is a program that was spinning its wheels for the better part of a decade prior to McGuire’s arrival.

When McGuire took over, he entrusted the personnel operation to Blanchard to run how he saw fit. Blanchard bet big on athleticism, offering recruits with elite track times or other distinguishing athletic traits, even if a prospect’s high school film didn’t pop. The goal, as Blanchard has often put it, was to build “the most athletic team in the country.”

Tech was at or near the top of the Big 12 recruiting rankings in the 2023 and ’24 classes, and this year the Red Raiders shifted their attention to the portal, going all-in in hopes of winning a Big 12 title in 2025.

Blanchard, in tandem with the Matador Club — the Red Raiders’ name, image and likeness collective — led an effort to construct one of the top portal classes in the country. They largely succeeded, beating out SEC and Big Ten schools for some coveted recruits thanks to an organized, targeted effort and a lot of cash. Texas Tech turned heads in college football personnel circles for what it was able to accomplish in December.

“James is one of the smartest guys I know and an incredible talent evaluator,” Cody Campbell, co-founder of the Matador Club and a former Texas Tech offensive lineman, said earlier this winter.

Final say on scholarship offers usually falls to the head coach in college football, and though McGuire also has that power, he gave Blanchard the freedom to offer recruits without prior approval because of their mutual trust. That level of autonomy is unique in the sport.

Where does this leave Notre Dame?

There’s no getting around that failing to pry a staffer away from Texas Tech is a difficult look for Notre Dame less than a month after the Irish played for a national championship.

Head coach Marcus Freeman wanted to push his personnel department forward after Chad Bowden’s departure for USC, needing to rethink back-of-the-house operations in the eras of NIL and the transfer portal. Blanchard checked many of those boxes, although his expertise was in scouting at the high school and transfer portal realms more than managing NIL and roster limits. Because that role is new for virtually every college program, where and how Notre Dame is a process that lacks a best-process practices.

Notre Dame doesn’t need to make a splashy hire, though Bowden and Blanchard seemed to have high profiles in the recruiting and personnel worlds. But some understanding of how Notre Dame and the new era of college football works should be mandatory.

Once candidate might be Cincinnati general manager Zach Grant, a 2016 Notre Dame graduate who spent one season as the director of player personnel at Ohio State under general manager Mark Pantoni, generally considering one of the gold standards in personnel management in the sport.

(Photo: Annie Rice / Avalanche-Journal / USA Today Network)