Head football coach Logan Masters and offensive coordinator Collin Prosser have been friends for a while now, and Wayne State College football has always been the root of that.
Masters was a standout wide receiver for the Wildcats from 2006-2009, and Prosser played offensive line, tight end, and fullback from 2005-2008.They said they were impressed with each other right away.
“The first time I understood who he was, we were on the practice field,” Prosser said. “He caught two or three balls and kind of shocked everybody on the sidelines. And we all said ‘who is this freshman catching the football?’”
“My first memory of him was on day two,” Masters said. “Coach Prosser could name off everyone on our entire team, 120 of us, and could say first name, last name, position, and the school they went to. I don’t know if he’s got photographic memory or what.”
Prosser coached several different places after graduating from WSC including as a Graduate Assistant for the University of South Dakota in his hometown of Vermillion, an assistant coach at Morningside, and as a position coach and offensive coordinator at Minnesota State-Mankato for five seasons before joining Masters’s staff in 2022. For Masters, Prosser was an easy choice to lead his offense.
“We were roommates,” Masters said. “We would always play college football dynasty mode on our PlayStation 2. We’d always joke that it would be cool to do this in real life. I don’t know if we outright said whoever became a head coach first would call the other one, but it just worked out here.”
When Masters replaced John McMenamin, who left to be an assistant coach at Tulane, he knew his first move.
“I called him up and said ‘coach McMenamin is leaving, and I’m going to be the next head coach. Do you want to do this like we used to do back in the apartment, except in real life?’ Him and his family came, and the rest is history.”
Prosser said it took some thinking, but, in the end, he wanted to be alongside Masters again.
“It wasn’t an instant decision with my family,” Prosser said. “But the opportunity to do it with your best friend and your roommate, he was the best man in my wedding, so to do it with a guy that you’ve spent countless hours with and have the same philosophies as…it works really well.”
Both say working together as friends is a positive.
“We are like minded,” Masters said. “We’re on the same page on how we want to do things. The biggest thing that I appreciate the most is he’s not afraid to speak up. It keeps you in check and helps us be a better football program.”
“It’s awesome to come to work because we can have work conversations and ten seconds later, we can have a friend conversation,” Prosser said. “Sometimes you can be a little more open and truthful.”