Let me rephrase. The flash isn't blank but the memory location for the U-boot within the flash is corrupted based on a bad u-boot load. I did figure out how to use the SD card. It is actually in the user guide pdf but I didn't find it on the online manual.
Anyway. If anyone else is wondering. I used this command with the SDcard in the host system in the folder with the u-boot in. Note:/dev/sdb is the device name for my host and might be different for yours.
dd if=u-boot-with-spl-pbl-sd.bin of=/dev/sdb bs=512 seek=8