Via Texas Tech, Joey McGuire and James Blanchard announced a two year extension for Blanchard, who is the Director of Player Personnel:

“After one full year in Lubbock, we couldn’t be more excited about the future of our football program,” McGuire said. “Our program will always revolve around identifying the right potential student-athletes and then developing them into Red Raiders, and James Blanchard is a key component of that success. We are thrilled he has agreed to this new contract extension.”

Through the efforts of Blanchard and Texas Tech’s personnel department, the Red Raiders are on pace to potentially sign one of its top recruiting classes in program history later this month. Texas Tech previously signed a top-40 class in the month after Blanchard’s hire last December, which marked the Red Raiders’ highest finish since 2012.

Blanchard was McGuire’s first hire shortly after accepting the Texas Tech position as the two previously worked together at Baylor. Blanchard also has experience in the NFL as a member of the Carolina Panthers organization for the 2020 season. He is a native or Orange, Texas, providing another key figure in McGuire’s program that has ties throughout the state.

I was honestly quite worried about Blanchard moving on to Nebraska and he might be a target for Matt Rhule and I absolutely 100% believe that Blanchard’s work-ethic and doggedness when it comes to finding players is second to none. McGuire said in his last press conference that this program has to build players from the ground up with high school players and supplement with portal players.

If you are into previews from today, here’s some from College Football News: Georgia vs. LSU; TCU vs. Kansas State; Clemson vs. North Carolina; and Michigan vs. Purdue.

There’s another huge sporting event: USA vs. Netherlands. Stars and Stripes FC has previews: what to watch for between the Americans and Dutch and a podcast preview. Also from The Ringer a good solid preview. For those of you who follow, the match starts at 9:00 a.m. CST on FOX or Telemundo.