One of three coaches still on staff from Southern Oregon's national championship team, Bryan Sander begins his sixth season with the Raiders in 2019.
Sander joined the Raider coaching staff as a linebackers coach in the spring of 2014 under head coach Craig Howard. With the arrival of new head coach Charlie Hall in 2017, he was made SOU's cornerbacks coach and special teams coordinator. Prior to the 2018 season, he was promoted to defensive line coach.
A product of Cincinnati, Ohio, he attended the local Mount St. Joseph University, where he was a defensive back on the football team for two years and graduated in 2007 with a degree in business.
From there, he started his coaching career overseeing defensive backs and receivers at Mayville State, on the same staff as current SOU coach Nathan Chin, from 2008-2010. He returned to his alma mater for two years after that, coaching running backs and receivers, before making his move to the West Coast and Humboldt State (Calif.), where he coached corners for one season in Arcata.
At SOU, Sander has coached some of the best linebackers in program history -- a list that includes Laurence Calcagno, who set SOU's single-season record for tackles (154) in 2014. Recently, he's assisted in pushing along the development of outside linebackers who were moved into starting roles as freshman, like Isiah Carter (in 2014), Tyson Cooper and Devvon Gage (in '15). In 2016, Gage was named a first-team All-Frontier Conference performer and Carter was selected to the second team.