LUBBOCK, Texas – James Blanchard used to get in trouble as a high school student at West Orange-Stark for spending too much time on Rivals.com. He was obsessed with film and evaluating fellow prep stars around the state. He joined message boards for programs such as Baylor and TCU and began posting about his favorite players and why they should have more offers. 

He noticed what he figured was a coincidence not long after that: Most of those prospects he was posting about eventually earned scholarship offers. Blanchard thought the talent in Orange, Texas, was overlooked by the time he was 24 years old and his younger brother, Travon, was a three-star linebacker for a state championship contender that included standouts such as J’Marcus Rhodes and Quentin Tezeno. 

Blanchard began making highlight tapes for his brother and his friends in the 2013 class. Eventually, seven of them signed with FBS programs – a school record for a single year and an unprecedented amount for a Class 3A program. Blanchard began doing the same for the entire Golden Triangle, helping players in his hometown and places such as nearby Beaumont. 

“I never charged a dime,” Blanchard said. “I just loved seeing those kids achieve their dream. It was just the coolest thing ever for me. It gave me a rush and that was my dopamine.” 

Blanchard wasn’t looking for a job in college sports. And he never dreamed of becoming a trailblazer in the recruiting space as the face of the budding General Manager position in college football. He was making $110,000 working at a fire hydrant plant in Orange. He and his wife, Kiara Fowler, owned a home, two cars, and already had two kids. The message board posting was a hobby. He didn’t know any college coaches, but he assumed the moderators of those boards did, and that they could get his growing list of prospects a chance to be seen. 

Turns out, college coaches perused those message boards as often as the eager Blanchard. His message board handle was JKBTC_53 and when Twitter was becoming the new “it” social platform for recruiting and evaluation, Blanchard decided to keep the same name. That was a stroke of accidental genius because it allowed the coaches who were lurking in the background of those message boards to contact him directly. 

The first college coach to connect with Blanchard and take him seriously as an evaluator was Utah assistant Morgan Scalley. Next was Brian Odom. Then came names like Fran Brown, Joey McGuire, and Zarnell Fitch. By 2014, Blanchard started a company called JKBRecruiting with schools such as TCU, Baylor, Missouri, and Utah as customers. In 2019, he received a call from Baylor head coach Matt Rhule, who was visiting Beaumont United High School to recruit linebacker Tryone Brown. And as fate would have it, he also wanted to recruit Blanchard.  

The two had met once before at a camp in Waco when Blanchard brought 10 kids with him from the Golden Triangle. He figured Rhule just wanted to meet up again and maybe use Blanchard’s connection to the area to help land Brown. Instead, he was offered a job on Rhule’s staff while sitting in the principal’s office. The catch was that the job as Director of Recruiting for the Bears had a starting salary of $70,000. Far less than what he made making fire hydrants. 

“On one hand, this was my dream. Like, this doesn’t happen. This is literally a movie,” Blanchard said about the offer. “But, also, I wasn’t sure I could take a $40,000 pay cut with a wife and a mortgage and two kids at home. Ultimately, I decided to bet on myself.” 

The bet didn’t cash right away. He sent home everything from his check except for $500 a month to eat and live on. Rather than paying rent for an apartment, he slept on Baylor defensive line coach Frank Okam’s couch or in his own car. Occasionally, he slept in McGuire’s office, who was the associate head coach in Baylor at the time. 

Blanchard did that for a little over a year until Rhule accepted the head coaching job with the Carolina Panthers and offered Blanchard a job, and a $20,000 raise, to work in the front office breaking down opponent film and evaluating potential free agents. He rejoined the Baylor staff in January 2021, but Blanchard says that year in the NFL provided him a doctorate in evaluating talent. 

Blanchard didn’t expect to follow McGuire from Baylor to Texas Tech. He thought McGuire was destined to become the head coach at North Texas after the 2021 season but the Mean Green job didn’t open. When McGuire first told Blanchard about the mutual interest between the Red Raiders and himself, Blanchard didn’t believe it. But as the smoke swirled higher and higher, the two formulated a plan to work together at Texas Tech. 

By then, Blanchard was making $170,000 a year for Baylor and head coach Dave Aranda, who had given him an $80,000 raise to rejoin the staff in Waco to identify and pursue prospective student-athletes. McGuire was offering $185,000 to join him Lubbock, but Blanchard admits to having cold feet, especially after Aranda offered him $200,000 not to get on the plane and to stay with the Bears. 

Blanchard eventually boarded that private jet with McGuire to become the first member of his staff at Texas Tech after talking to Rhule and deciding the relationship with McGuire was worth more than 20 grand.  

“I called Joey up and said, ‘hey, I’m going to be late, but I’m coming,” Blanchard said. “He told me they’d hold the plane and to come on.”

McGuire allowed Blanchard unprecedented freedom to offer players and to build Texas Tech’s roster. He signed consecutive Top 25 recruiting classes, including a No. 23 ranking in 2023 – the highest for the Red Raiders in more than a decade. The 2024 class was the highest ranked in the Big 12. Entering Year 4 in Lubbock, McGuire and Blanchard raided the transfer portal and signed arguably the top haul in all of FBS. That achievement brought about more potential suitors, including Notre Dame. 

Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman tried to hire Blanchard in 2023 for a role as Director of Player Personnel. Blanchard turned it down because, at the time, Freeman couldn’t see the future. Blanchard tried to convince him that the next wave in college was the General Manager spot and when the two couldn’t agree on the role, he told Freeman that he’d be back to offer him a GM spot two years later. That’s exactly what happened. 

“That was hard to turn down,” Blanchard admitted. “That was the closest I’ve ever gotten to leaving. The prestige of that place and coming off a national championship – who wouldn’t think about that?” 

Blanchard said he turned down the job because of his love for the Lubbock community. His kids – all five of them – love the schools. There is also something unique about the current situation in Lubbock. All the places with the funds to entice Blanchard to leave are legacy programs with blue-blood status. At Tech, he can help the Red Raiders accomplish firsts like an outright Big 12 championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff. He’s on the cutting floor of something historic. Something special. He helped land the class that he believes could put Texas Tech over the hump. He couldn’t just leave before seeing it through. He's now making over $500,000 a year as the GM. 

“As far as resources and alignment go, this has to be one of the best five jobs in America,” Blanchard said. “Now, we have to put a proven product on the field and get those results to back that up. But from the admin to the donors to the coaches and support staff, I can only imagine this is how it felt at Oregon when they first started getting tread on those tires.”