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Date: March 13,1989

Location: CRANBURY

Title: From Throwing FootbalIs in the NFL To Building Houses Back Home Author: John Nielsen

Subject: Once a local prep star, ex-Giant Scott Brunner now runs his own development firm

Back in the mid-1970s a rangy young quarterback on the Lawrence High football team used to ride his bike to the Princeton campus to work out every day with the big boys. He could do it because his father was a varsity football coach. Later the young man would go on to star at the University of Delaware and start for the New York Giants.

At 31 and 6” 5″, Scott Brunner looks like he could still zing spirals in the National Football League. But these days he is the taller half of Depp & Brunner Associates, residential real estate developers in Cranbury. (His partner, Lex Depp, stands a less conspicuous 6” 1″.) It is a modest enterprise by present-day standards in Central New Jersey. It operates out of Brunner”s home, where he lives with his wife Dale and their three children: Ashley, 4, Whitney, 2, and Adam, eight months. The firm clears just a few hundred thousand dollars in a typical year, and much of that gets ploughed back into the business.

All of this suits the onetime quarterback just fine. In fact, Brunner spent his playing days preparing for just such a life. Says he: “I learned the business helping my father-in-law, who is a builder in North Jersey The off-seasons were too short for me to get deeply involved, because real estate development is a slow process. But it helped. I kept the house in Cranbury because I knew that no matter where my football career took me, I”d make my home here.”

For a time it looked like Brunner”s career would take him very far indeed. Delaware was hardly a national power in the sport, and he did not make first string until his senior year. But the team was undefeated, and that was enough to make him the Giants” sixth-round draft pick in 1980. The following year, he led the Giants to the playoffs; they beat the Eagles in the wild-card game and lost to the 49ers, the eventual Super Bowl champions, in the next round. Brunner was the starting quarterback for all but three games over the next two seasons.

Then things began to sour. Bill Parcells took over as the Giants” head coach, Phil Simms recovered from a series of injuries, and Brunner was suddenly expendable. In 1984 he was traded to Denver, where he contracted a rare strep infection in his knee and never played a down. In rapid succession he was shipped to the Green Bay Packers and then to the St. Louis Cardinals. By 1986 he had had enough. “It got too political,” he says. “With my last few teams, it didn”t matter how well you performed. I knew I”d have to face retirement sometime, so I decided to do it on my terms rather than somebody else”s.”

Doing it his way meant coming home and launching Depp & Brunner–with a little help from his NFL nestegg. “That”s one of the benefits of pro ball,” he says. “You can put away a lot of money very quickly. I had the luxury of not having to draw on company income.”

Being an ex-Giant did not hurt either. “It gives people something to talk about, and that helps.” Brunner says. “If you can get people feeling comfortable, they”re more apt to do business with you than with somebody coming in cold off the street.” He also meets an astonishing number of people who swear they were his greatest fans and never missed a game.

Using those advantages, Brunner and Depp have staked out a profitable niche in the housing boom around Princeton. Says he: “We put together limited partnerships and buy up parcels of land for small developments–maybe a couple of $500,000 houses or a handful of less expensive ones. We try to find opportunities that are too small to interest big developers.”

Brunner insists that his firm will stay small. “We only need to sell one or two houses a year for our personal incomes,” he says. “Last year our sales totaled $1.5 million and we kept 20% to 25% of it. That”s fine. We don”t need to raise $15 million to do a deal. We offer opportunities for small investors–people who have $10,000 or $20,000, say. There are a lot of opportunities in the five-to 15-lot deals.”

Having a marketable name has opened other doors as well. Brunner regularly gets attractive offers from local businesses. So far he has resisted temptation, primarily because the jobs would take too much time away from his company. At the moment, his main extracurricular activities are a Princeton football highlights program on local cable TV networks and a pick-the-pros radio show on WHWH. “We pick the Giants, Jets and Eagles games against the spreads,” he says. “Then we sit back and see how badly we”ve done through the season. It”s fun.”

This summer Brunner will launch another project, one that is especially close to his heart: a quarterback camp for Mercer County high school players. “All the high school coaches seem very receptive,” he says. “It”s an opportunity for the kids to get some specialized instruction. We”ll have two sessions. In the early summer we”ll concentrate on the basics. Then just before the season begins, we”ll do a tuneup and see how they have progressed over the summer. We”ll also go over some of the important mental aspects of the game.”

The landscape is littered with football camps, of course, at considerably more than a dime a dozen. But this one will be free. Says Brunner: “I”ll donate my time. I still love football, and this is a chance for me to give something back to the area I grew up in. There are too many people making money on athletics today, and I think they”re sending the wrong message to the kids. Athletics are something to enjoy, especially when you”re young. I know I”m not a better athlete than a lot of kids out there. If I can make it to the pros–or to any advanced level–a lot of these kids can too. And they can learn about competition, teamwork and commitment. They might not make it to the NFL, but they can apply those lessons to other fields and achieve excellence in them.”

No longer the public figure, Brunner today is content to achieve excellence in private pursuits. “Right now, I want to stick with the company and make it grow,” he says. “We don”t have to be huge. Even small opportunities can be profitable.”