Sunday Conversation: Marv Sunderland’s NFL career
Editor’s Note: Marv Sunderland fell in love with football as a youngster in Chester and his passion for the game has never waned. His career in professional football player personnel has spanned more than 40 years and continues now in a college scouting role for the Ottawa Redblacks of the CFL. Marv and his family lived in Great Falls for many years and his son Brock is now an assistant GM at Ottawa, which last week won the Grey Cup championship with a 39-33 overtime victory over coach Dave Dickenson’s Calgary Stampeders. Marv lives now in Arizona, where we caught up with him this week for our Sunday Conversation.
Question: It’s great to talk to you, Marv. This is what, year 41 of your pro football career?
Answer: This will be the start of 42. And I don’t plan on giving it up.
Q: Heck no. You must be feeling good these days.
A: My health is great. Thank you.
Q: Well, those of us here in Great Falls didn’t feel so bad when David Dickenson’s Stampeders lost after we realized Brock was Ottawa’s assistant GM.
A: Tell you what, you’ve got two CMR guys with their teams in the Grey Cup. I think Great Falls and CMR and the state of Montana should be proud of those guys, really.
Q: No doubt. Dave is older than Brock, right?
A: About four years older. I think Dave is the same age as my daughter (Shay). Brock idolized Dave when he was growing up. Dave was always very nice to him. So Brock’s always thought the world of Dave.
Q: Must have been quite a Grey Cup. Were you there?
A: Yes I was. Calgary was good, but Ottawa was maybe a little tougher team as far as being physical. That was probably the difference, I thought. It was kind of hard. Dave didn’t want to lose that game and neither did Brock.
Q: Congrats to you and Brock. You’ve got to be proud of your son’s accomplishments. He’s followed in your footsteps pretty well.
A: You know what, he’s so far ahead of where I was at the same time that it’s not even close. I know there are some teams up there interested in him as far as moving up and being a general manager.
Q: Fans of the Redblacks had to be partying this week, right? I know it’s an expansion team that was playing just its third season in the CFL. Quite an accomplishment.
A: It had been 40 years since they won a Grey Cup at Ottawa. I guess they had about 300,000 show up for the parade.
Q: I’ll bet Brock still asks the old man for advice from time to time. Is that correct?
A: We communicate a lot, and we always have. When he was at the University of Montana and had that knee injury that cut his career short, I had to talk one of our team physicians with the (New York) Giants into calling the team physician with the Grizzlies to let Brock know he couldn’t play anymore. Because I wasn’t going to do it. It wouldn’t have gone over very big.
Q: I remember meeting Brock when he was in high school at CMR, Marv. He was a great athlete. Maybe not as good as the old fullback from Chester, but pretty good.
A: (laughs) No, no. He was ahead of me.
Q: What year did you graduate from Chester High, Marvin?
A: 1962.
Q: Then Northern Montana College, right?
A: Yep. Went from there to the New Orleans Saints, and that was a short-lived tryout. But at least I got there. And I went from there up to Calgary.
Q: So you played with the Stampeders?
A: Well, let me put it this way: I was in training camp with the Stamps (laughs). I was there for two or three weeks and was released. I was offered a job as assistant football coach in Chinook and stayed there for two years. Then I had a good friend who became the head coach at Hardin and he talked me into going to Hardin. If I had it to do over again, I’d never have gone because they offered me the head football job at Chinook.
Q: How did you eventually start working in the NFL?
A: There was a coaching clinic at Moorhead, Minnesota, and they had an all-star football game that I played in a few years. Ray Graves, who was head coach at Florida, coached one of the teams and Woody Hayes coached the other. I ended playing in that all-star game about three years, and I got to know Ron Erhardt, who was head coach at North Dakota State at the time.
Q: I see. That’s how you got to NDSU as an assistant.
A: Yes. I got my master’s there and then Ron hired me. I was there for six or seven years. And then Ron went to the Patriots (as an assistant coach) and I went along (as a New England scout). Chuck Fairbanks was the head coach there.
Q: Were you at the Patriots’ game against the Raiders when Darryl Stingley was injured (in August, 1978)?
A: Yes, I was in the press box when Darryl was paralyzed after that hit by (Jack) Tatum. Later we were on the charter going back to Boston out of Oakland, and as we were taxiing out they stopped the plane and called coach Fairbanks off the plane. John Madden (Raiders’ coach) had gone out to the hospital and noticed that Darryl was moving his right hand. So John called right away. Everybody on the plane was in a pressure cooker, so when Chuck got back and told everyone we all were very happy. Little did we know that the only movement Darryl would ever get back was his right hand.
Q: Terrible.
A: Yes, it was.
Q: Wasn’t long after that you went to work for the New York Jets, right?
A: I started with Patriots in August of ’76 and started with the Jets late in the spring of ’79. I was with them for 20 years, then we hired Bill Parcells. The first year he was there we finished the draft and I flew home to Great Falls and a few days later Bill calls me up. I thought he was looking for another player. But he said to me ‘I found you a job.’ I told him I thought I had one. And he started laughing.
Q: What was the deal?
A: Bill said ‘I just got off the phone with Wellington Mara (owner of the New York Giants). He’s looking for a personnel director and I told him you’d be the guy.’ Bill told me I had to take the job. It was too good of a deal to pass up. So that’s how I got to the Giants.
Q: I bet you’re thankful to this day for your relationship with Bill Parcells.
A: He was good to me. A real good guy. I’ve kept in contact with him over the years.
Q: A few years later, though, you left the Giants. How did that happen?
A: I resigned from the Giants. There was too much internal stuff going on. I’d come from the Jets to the Giants and there were a couple of people there trying to knock my socks off. It was starting to affect my family and I said ‘that’s it.’
Q: Then what did you do?
A: I went out to Seattle and worked for a good friend of mine who had a company called Pacific Institute. We dealt with a lot of our elite military troops: Blue Angels, Naval Aviation, Army Intelligence … About 60 percent of the Fortune 500 companies used our information. So it was a good learning process. But I decided I wanted to get back into football. So I called Ron Wolf, who I had worked with with the Jets and knew had a lot of contacts. And that’s how I got to Tennessee. I was with the Titans for nine years, then left this year to work for the Redblacks.
Q: You know Marv, just last week I talked to Marc Mariani of the Titans. What a great young man he is. Everybody back home is very proud of him.
A: Yes. He was one of my guys. Marc is a super guy.
Q: I’ll never forget once around Christmas time in about 1991 you stopped here in our office to stay hello to my good friend George Geise and myself and the Packers had just hired Ron Wolf and I remember I asked you about him. And you said ‘Hey, this guy is going to make the best decisions for the Packers,’ and the next thing you know Wolf trades for some quarterback nobody had ever heard of named Brett Fav-ray. (laughs)
A: Yep. And a good friend of mine, Ken Herock, was the guy with the Falcons who drafted Brett. The only reason they let him was because Jerry Glanville couldn’t stand him (laughs).
Q: Boy, the men you’ve met in the NFL. Ron Wolf, Bill Parcells, Ron Erhardt …
A: Bill Belichick, too. And Walt Michaels, too. Walt was a Pro Bowl player for the Cleveland Browns for years and was head coach with the Jets (from 1977-82).
Q: Well, you’re a guy from little Chester, Montana, and what a career you’ve had in pro football.
A: You know, I was lucky. Football was a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. From the first time I ever saw a game on TV. When I was growing up Chester High School didn’t even have a team and then when they started football I went out and started watching practice. I was like in the sixth grade and the head coach was a guy named Leo Shepherd. And he asked me to be the team manager, and I said sure. Then the next year they started taking me on the bus trips with the team.
Q: Do you still have relatives up there in Chester?
A: My mother passed away about six years ago, and I had an aunt up there that passed away about four years. I do have an uncle up there. He’s 92, I think, right now. His name is Harold Prihoda.
Q: Well, I have to say hi to you from Jo Lasich in Missoula. Jo was Kenny Staninger’s longtime secretary. She’s the one who helped me with your number.
A: Oh, really. What a great lady she is.
Q: And what a great guy Ken was, right Marv?
A: Yes. Ken (a player agent) was a good friend of mine. I helped him get started with some players a long time ago.
Q: How did it happen that your family lived in Great Falls for so many years when you were working in the NFL?
A: I’ve got to stop and think about that. I got married (his late first wife Linda, who was from Inverness) and my daughter Shay was born in Fargo. Then I ended up coming back to Great Falls and got the job with the Patriots, and traveled in and out of Great Falls all the time. My kids were young and my wife had family there.
Q: I see.
A: Then the second year I was with the Jets, Bill Polian (general manager of the Buffalo Bills) called me. He and Marv Levy (Bills’ coach) interviewed me for a (director of player personnel) job and offered it to me. But I ended up turning it down because my wife had just been diagnosed with cancer. They had great cancer hospitals there in Buffalo, but she would have lost the support system she had in Great Falls. So …
Q: I’m sorry about that, Marv. I know you later got remarried. To a Great Falls lady, right?
A: Yes. My wife is Charlotte. She was an O’Hara. Her brother is Jesse and her son was Brock, who played running back for Jack Johnson there at CMR. Char is really into pro football. She’s helped me very much.
Q: Needless to say, Marv, Great Falls was a great place for your kids to grow up, right?
A: Oh, it’s excellent. I have no regrets about being in Great Falls. It’s a great city with a lot of good people. There have been people who have come out of there to do great things. Chester, Montana, is also a good place.
Q: Where is your daughter Shay these days?
A: She lives with her husband, Bart, and my grandson Maxwell in Amsterdam, Holland. They will be in Missoula for Christmas. We’ve got some relatives there and we’re all gathering there for Christmas.
Q: How many miles do you figure you’ve flown during your NFL career, Marv?
A: (laughs) Well, I can give you one airline, because I get the mileage all the time. I’ve got 2 and a half million miles on Delta. There’s probably another 1.5 million on Northwest Airlines. That doesn’t count Western Airlines and Hughes Air West, which used to come into Great Falls.
Q: I’ve got to ask one more question: What the heck is a Redblack?
A: Here’s the deal. Ottawa used to be called the Rough Riders, along with Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan Rough Riders are cowboys and wranglers, and the Ottawa Rough Riders were the guys that wore the logging shirts, those big red and black flannel shirts. At one time they were called the Renegades that didn’t fit the community, so they had a contest I guess when they started this new team. It’s kind of like the Red Sox. But Redblacks is what they came up with. And it’s taken off. The ownership in Ottawa is outstanding.
Q: What a memorable season it had to be for you and Brock.
A: It certainly was.
Q: I’m very glad to talk to you, Marv. Glad to hear that you’re feeling great and still working hard and enjoying football.
A: Whatever happens, I’ll probably have a TV set watching football when I finally take a dirt nap (laughs).
Q: Thank you, sir.
A: I appreciate it very much, Scott. Thanks for the call.
Scott Mansch, whose Sunday Conversations appear frequently in the Tribune, can be reached at 791-1481 or smansch@greatfallstribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @GFTrib_SMansch