Long before he had the goal of becoming a football team’s general manager, Sunderland dreamed of being a professional football player.
He was a receiver and punt returner with the University of Montana Grizzlies until being forced to quit the game after having six surgeries on his left knee (anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, four meniscus and a micro-fracture) and suffering a severe injury (bone chips and a stretched Achilles tendon) in his right ankle going into his junior season of college.
All of the injuries, including his first knee problem at the age of 16, occurred during practice.
“It was a very difficult time,” Sunderland said about failing his physical with the Grizzlies in 2001 after earning a starting job at receiver for the second year in a row. “It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. When your body shuts down on you when you’re a highly competitive person, it’s hard to swallow.”
To fulfil his scholarship requirements, Sunderland accepted the option of serving as a student assistant coach in 2002 because “I knew the offence really well and loved the game.” But that turned out to be much harder than he expected.
“I hadn’t separated the player mentality yet and it was just difficult,” he said. “I was devastated that I couldn’t finish on my own terms and I missed playing more than words (could explain).
“It was hard to be around it, mostly because that would have been my senior year and I was watching people who took my starting position. I was still too competitive. Whoever that particular player was who caught the ball, I never said it, but in my mind, I was like, ‘Well, I would have scored.’ ”
During his down time in college – Christmas breaks and the summer during his last three years – Sunderland also wrote scouting reports on players a Missioula, Mt.-based agent named Ken Staniger was interested in recruiting.
“So that was my first official paid scouting position,” he said.
Sunderland left football completely after graduating from college because it was “too painful” to be around. He didn’t even watch a football game for about a year and became a mortgage broker in Louisville, Ky. A couple of sparks of the old passion came back before he took a job in pharmaceutical sales and moved back to Montana.
“I was in New Jersey at a training seminar and there was a college football game on (TV),” he recalled. “It was kind of my a-ha moment. The pain was kind of gone and the passion to get back involved in it struck all at once.”
Sunderland started cold-calling CFL teams looking for a job. He didn’t even try to contact any NFL teams because he didn’t want to be accused of nepotism due to his father’s long involvement with that league.
“Some (teams) got back to me, some didn’t,” he said. “I still have all the letters of rejection, to be honest with you.”
Former Eskimos assistant coach Craig Dickenson told then-Montreal Alouettes GM Jim Popp about the player he had once recruited to play at the U of Montana and Sunderland’s pro journey began with “an opportunity, not necessarily a job” in the fall of 2004. He was told if he went to NCAA games and sent in reports, there was potential for a full-time job if the Alouettes liked his work.
“I quit my pharmaceutical job on the spot and just dedicated that fall to scouting and doing everything I could to get my foot in the door officially,” Sunderland said.
He moved to Montreal in April 2005 and served as a pro and college scout for about a year before getting promoted to director of scouting.
In 2007, he joined the NFL’s New York Jets and had different responsibilities over six years, including scouting the CFL. His father, Marv, who had worked with the Jets two different times, was now with the Tennessee Titans, so they made “a little fake trophy” and called any games between the teams “the Sunderland Bowl.”
“We had fun with it,” Brock said.
Ottawa Redblacks GM Marcel Desjardins brought Sunderland back to the CFL with an offer he couldn’t refuse – to be the assistant general manager of the expansion franchise in 2014. Sunderland and Desjardins knew each other from their days together in Montreal.