The Journey of Mark Ross: From the Field to Finding Purpose

Mark Ross played Division I football at Iowa. He worked in banking for twenty years. Then he got caught laundering money for drug dealers and ended up serving over four years at Leavenworth federal prison. When I talked with Mark, he didn’t sugarcoat any of it.

From Small Town Iowa to Kinnick Stadium

Mark grew up in Dune, Iowa, population 850. His dad ran heavy equipment for the county. His mom was a nurse. Mark and his twin brother played every sport in season, wearing NFL helmets they got for birthday presents and beating each other up on the field behind the old school.

“You know, I played every sport of what was in season,” Mark told me. “And fortunately, I grew, my family grew up in a pity corner from the old school that was in Dune. So, the ballpark was there. And a big field that we played football on. And then, of course, that basketball court. So, we were always over at the school. From sun up to sundown during the summer.”

He played at 280 pounds and wrestled at heavyweight. Three workouts a day during wrestling season. In high school, their weight room was “like an overgrown utility closet” with three benches and two squat racks.

After junior college, Mark walked on at Iowa. Running out of that tunnel at Kinnick Stadium, with 70,000 people screaming and AC/DC’s “Back in Black” blasting, never left him. “It’s absolutely electrifying,” he said. “Your adrenaline is beyond. I mean, you’re ready to run through a wall.”

The Banking Years and the Wrong Turn

After college, Mark worked finance jobs at Citibank, First Premier, and Billion Automotive before settling into banking for two decades. Life was steady. Then some acquaintances approached him about hiding money from their drug operations.

“They were going to pay me X amount of dollars and I was still out drinking at party and using drugs myself,” Mark explained. “So I knew, you know, that would be an opportunity and nobody ever wants to turn down money. So that’s what I did. I started helping them and then I actually started dealing with myself.”

Mark used banks across three states, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota. That made it federal. He even used his father’s private savings account without permission, knowing his dad rarely checked it.

The end came suddenly. FBI agent Matt Miller called Mark’s mother in spring 2009. A few months later, Miller showed up at the door. Mark’s twin brother answered, and because they look identical, Miller had to check ID.

“When he shows up at the door,” Mark said, “he goes, we need to have a little visit about a few different things. And I said, well, what do you want to know? And whatever I knew I was done with.”

Leavenworth and the Tractor That Made History

Mark got 24 months and voluntarily surrendered. At Leavenworth, overcrowding meant sleeping on a cot in the disciplinary housing unit his first night. In August. With no air conditioning. For a big guy who sweats easily, it was miserable.

The chapel provided toiletries that first evening. Another inmate gave him tennis shoes to replace the brick-like prison boots. Mark found work on the landscaping crew, driving tractor and pulling a flatbed wagon full of inmates with weed eaters.

Then came the day that probably still gets talked about at Leavenworth. Mark was driving the crew down from the Warden’s Hill when the brakes and clutch failed on the 1960s Ford tractor. No way to stop. The hill was steep enough that the road to the warden’s house had to zigzag twice to make it manageable.

“I yelled back and tell the guys, hang on because this isn’t going to end good,” Mark recalled. “So, I’m proceeding down the hill and there’s a cable with wooden pillars that this cable goes through and I’m thinking fast that I need to hit that cable somehow to slow me down enough and hang on. And I was turning and I rolled the tractor to its side and the guys in the back went flying and the flatbed rolled over as well.”

Mark pinned his leg, gashed his forehead, fractured his skull, and bruised ribs. When he woke up, his first thought was making sure he could see and move. The other inmates were scraped up but okay. Amazing, considering how much worse it could have been.

Family, Forgiveness, and Finding Purpose

Mark’s relationship with his parents hit bottom during the case. His mother sent him a two-word letter on his 40th birthday: “F off.” She had never used that word before in her life.

But about a month before his release, Mark managed to call home. His mother told him she loved him, and so did his dad. That conversation changed everything. When Mark got out, his father and twin brother picked him up from the bus station. His mother visited the following weekend.

Mark went to a halfway house in Sioux Falls. The first Sunday, he went to church and ran into someone from his past, one of the guys who used to party in his old circle. Except now the guy was Pastor Monty Gannon.

“I said, are you kidding me right now?” Mark remembered. “He goes, what about? He goes, I go, so you don’t know where I’m dead. He goes, no, I heard you left for a while, blah, blah, blah, whatever, I’m blown away that he doesn’t know that I went to Pedro Prison.”

Pastor Monty offered Mark computer work at the church five days a week. It was exactly what he needed to get back on his feet.

Now Mark speaks to Fellowship of Christian Athletes groups and youth organizations. His message is simple: take responsibility. “You have nobody to blame but yourself because you decided to go down that path and you should have took a right and you took a left,” he tells them.

Mark still goes to Iowa football games. Still gets goosebumps when the team runs out to “Back in Black.” He coaches youth sports with his twin brother, though he notes that coaching has changed, you can’t yell at kids the way coaches used to.

His father forgave him before passing away four years ago. Mark made amends with his family. The guy who rolled a tractor at federal prison found his way home.