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‘We had unfinished business here’ - Former Notre Dame GM candidate sets the record straight why he turned down HC Marcus Freeman

Originally posted on A to Z Sports | By Ryan Roberts | Last updated Jun 12, 2025 12:42 PM ET

The Chad Bowden departure from Notre Dame to USC this offseason has gotten weirder and weirder the further away we get from it. We have seen Bowden make several interesting comments seemingly targeted at the Fighting Irish program, and there appears to be some bad blood there.

When he left, head coach Marcus Freeman and the Fighting Irish staff were forced to do a deep search for their next general manager. The name most people focused on was current Texas Tech general manager James Blanchard. Considered a rising star in the personnel world, he became the top candidate to know, and Notre Dame did make him an offer.

After a couple of days of it seeming like Blanchard was going to be the guy, it came out that he declined the very competitive offer from the Irish. He would remain in Lubbock, which was obviously a huge victory for the Red Raiders program. There was a ton of speculation about why Blanchard did decline, but the story was never fully put out there.

Blanchard joined Adam Breneman on the Next Up podcast earlier this week. He finally gave his full reasoning for not accepting Notre Dame’s offer.

“Turning down the Notre Dame job was hard,” Blanchard explained. “Man, you walk in there and you see Marcus Freeman, this guy is like a rockstar. This guy is a rockstar. He has a glow about him when he walks in the room and whatever. You can just tell why he’s so successful.

But we had unfinished business here. We had just signed like 85 percent of what became the No. 1 portal class in the country. I came here to do something that had never been done at this program before. We had never even been to the Big 12 championship game before. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night if I hadn’t accomplished that mission with Coach McGuire.

People are going to have many of times to take other jobs and opportunities but you are not going to have a lot of times to make history. That was big for me. That was big for our coaching staff. It goes back to the people I work with, the administrators, AD Kirby Hocutt I work with, and the head coach I work with in Joey McGuire.”

It was admirable to hear about Blanchard’s motives, and his relationship with Coach McGuire and the Texas Tech program. That doesn’t fully put to bed some conflicting reports surrounding the Blanchard situation. However, it doesn’t actually matter at this point, and is firmly in the past.

After the Blanchard courting ended, Notre Dame was able to recover well. They eventually settled on former Detroit Lions executive Mike Martin, bringing deep NFL and evaluation experience to the table. The early feedback has been very positive about Martin and his impact on the program.

It will be interesting to evaluate how well each does during the course of their careers, and the parallels it will create.

This article first appeared on A to Z Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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