Back in the Day, Hillsdale Played Football Against a Suspected Serial Killer

Here’s a football fact you probably didn’t know: Back when he first got to prison in the early 1970s, the notorious murderer John Norman Collins used to play football on the inmate team at Jackson Prison. And he didn’t just play games against other inmates.

He played college kids.

That’s right. Back in the day, the murderers and armed robbers and other hardened criminals at the Southern Michigan Prison at Jackson used to play tackle football games against college teams. The inmates played other sports against college teams (including baseball and basketball), but the football games were by far the most memorable.

And John Norman Collins—the infamous “Michigan Murders” killer who terrorized Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor in the late 1960s—was a star linebacker on the prison team, so he was a regular in those games.

Hillsdale College came to Jackson every year to play the inmates, and other college teams played there as well, including Ferris State. It wasn’t the varsity teams that came to Jackson, it was the JV teams (also called the “reserves”). Freshmen and sophomores were looking to gain valuable playing time, so they came to Jackson to play a game.

It seems unfathomable now that an 18-year-old kid who had only been on his college campus for a few weeks was going behind the walls of the state’s most notorious prison to play a football game, but that was the norm back then.

Jackson Prison ended its tackle football program in the late 1970s, and outside teams never go behind the walls of Michigan’s prisons to play any sport these days, but it happened every weekend back then.

The full story of the prison football games first came to light in 2023, when my documentary filmmaking class at Hillsdale College did a documentary about them, called “The Prison Games.” The students were able to interview several of the Hillsdale grads who played in those games, and what we learned is that to a man, every one of them said it was one of the most memorable experiences of their lives.

“Coming out and seeing the inmates and some of them dressed up like female cheerleaders and walking around holding hands and different stuff, for an 18-year-old suburban kid who was pretty sheltered growing up, I was a little nervous,” said Keith Otterbein, a Hillsdale grad who later became the school’s head football coach. “We were nervous at first until after the first hit. Then it was just like playing a regular team.”

At Hillsdale, the prison games experience started in the early 1960s when Coach Frank “Muddy” Waters had so many players on his team that he found it necessary to start a reserve team. He wanted his freshmen and sophomores to get game experience, but the problem was that very few other colleges in Michigan also had reserve teams.

Waters started looking for other teams that his young kids could play, and he had a friend who was the athletic director at Jackson Prison, so that’s how it all began. Once the Hillsdale reserves played their first game behind the walls, Muddy realized it was a valuable experience beyond just the football game, so he made it mandatory.

“Everybody had to go,” said former Hillsdale player Michael Mills. “It didn't matter. You could be a four-year starter, you could be an All-American, and you were going to play one time inside Jackson Prison. Muddy saw it as a great teaching tool. Muddy’s whole point was these guys are just one decision away from where you're at. You can make a decision in a minute and end up inside of here.”

Hillsdale College is only a 40-minute drive from Jackson Prison, but as the players discovered, it was a whole world away.

When the team arrived at the prison for the game, they were taken inside and the guards sternly told them the rules. Among other things, they were told that if a fight or any other disturbance broke out during the game, everybody needed to hit the deck and lay flat on the ground. If they started running off the field, they might get shot.

OK, then. We’re not playing Albion College.

“The inmates always cheered for us,” said former Hillsdale player Lester Mallery. “They did not like the football team at Jackson Prison because those guys got favors. They got special food, they got practice time, and these guys didn't get any of that.”

The Hillsdale players also discovered that some of the criminals they’d been reading about in the newspapers were now lined up across the field against them. In the 1960s, the quarterback for the prison team was Art Gowens, a former football star at Michigan State who was in prison for killing his wife.

And then there was John Norman Collins, the linebacker who was sentenced to life in prison in 1970 for the murder of an Eastern Michigan University co-ed named Karen Sue Beineman. He was suspected in the murders of six other co-eds in the Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor area.

In the fall of 1975, one of the players on the Hillsdale team was Brian Anderson, a star running back who was from Ypsilanti and knew exactly who Collins was. As Anderson told it, they had a memorable exchange during the game.

“He was a linebacker, and I was a running back,” Anderson said. “I had something like a 70-yard touchdown when he chased me all the way to the end zone. I mean, he was like 15 yards behind me. I was giving the ball to the ref, and he was still coming. I looked at the ref, I said, ‘You want to make sure that guy doesn’t try to tackle me? I don't know if that guy’s trying to kill me or not.’”

The Chargers won that game, as they did most of the games that were played at Jackson Prison.

The last Hillsdale vs. Jackson game was played a couple years later. The prison ended its tackle football program in the late 1970s and since then, the Chargers have only played other college teams.

For the guys who played in the prison games, though, the memories are eternal.

“Lesson number one was that I never want to go to prison,” said former Hillsdale player Zach Kaanan. “That’s number one. There’s nothing nice about it. Then I think the second thing I learned about going there is that they’re still human beings. They’re still people even though they’re prisoners. They made mistakes and they were paying for their mistakes. But they're still human beings.”