Armed Forces Bowl Parachutist Survives Scary Cable Crash: A Bowl Season Miracle
College football bowl season is famously the time of year when logic goes on vacation. We dump buckets of mayonnaise on winning coaches, we watch mascots get devoured by players, and we endure games played on baseball diamonds. It is a glorious, chaotic fever dream. But on Friday afternoon at the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, the chaos turned from “quirky” to “heart-stopping” in a matter of seconds.
Before Texas State and Rice could even tee up the ball, the pre-game pageantry took a terrifying turn when a member of the parachute team, the All Veteran Group, found himself in a battle with gravity—and a field goal net cable.
Spoiler alert: Gravity won the round, but the jumper won the war.
A Terrifying Pre-Game Spectacle At Amon G. Carter Stadium
If you’ve been to a college football game, you know the drill. The anthem hits, the jets fly over, and usually, someone drops from the sky with a trailing flag to pump up the crowd. It’s a staple. But at Amon G. Carter Stadium, high winds decided to play free safety against the incoming skydivers.
As the parachutist made his descent, aiming for the turf, he drifted off course. In a sequence that looked like a special effects stunt gone wrong, he snagged the support cable of the field goal netting. For a brief, agonizing second, he hung suspended in mid-air—a human pendulum caught in the machinery of the stadium—before the rig gave way.
He plummeted several yards, crashing onto the hard turf below.
The collective gasp from the crowd was audible even on the broadcast. You could feel the air leave the stadium. We tune in to watch linebackers crush running backs, not to see a military veteran take a freefall impact without a safety net. It was one of those moments where the band stops playing, the popcorn stops crunching, and 40,000 people hold their breath simultaneously.
The Silence Before the Relief: Updates On the Jumper
Here is the part where we can all exhale. According to a spokesman for the Armed Forces Bowl, the jumper didn’t just survive; he walked away under his own power.
Let that sink in. The man got tangled in industrial cabling, fell from the height of a second-story window, hit the ground, and apparently just shook it off. If that isn’t the most definitive “I’m a veteran, I’ve seen worse” energy, I don’t know what is.
Reports from the Houston Chronicle confirmed that no one on the ground was injured during the crash landing, which is a minor miracle in itself given the crowded sidelines of a bowl game. The All Veteran Group, formed in 2011, has performed these stunts flawlessly at dozens of events, but Friday proved that “Mother Nature” remains undefeated.
It wasn’t just this one jumper who struggled, either. The wind was wreaking havoc on the whole squad. While three jumpers managed to stick the landing (one landing a bit hot), another missed the playing field entirely. It was a chaotic scene that arguably provided more drama than the actual football game that followed.
Is the Sky Falling? A Strange Trend In Bowl Season Aerial Stunts
Weirdly enough, this wasn’t an isolated incident. If you had “Parachute Malfunctions” on your 2025-2026 bowl season bingo card, you are winning big right now.
Just recently, at the Salute to Veterans Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama, another jumper missed the mark entirely, landing in a nearby baseball field instead of the Cramton Bowl. When you have two aerial mishaps in one bowl cycle, you have to start wondering if the Football Gods are trying to tell us something. Maybe let’s keep the pre-game entertainment on the ground for a week or two? We have marching bands for a reason.
While the “high winds” excuse is valid, it certainly raises the blood pressure of everyone in the stands. We love the spectacle, but we love everyone going home in one piece a lot more.
Texas State Dominates Rice In the Actual Football Game
Once everyone’s heart rates returned to double digits, an actual football game broke out. Well, sort of. It was less of a game and more of a systematic dismantling.
Texas State, clearly unbothered by the pre-game adrenaline spike, absolutely rolled over Rice with a 41-10 Armed Forces Bowl blowout. The Bobcats finished their season above .500 with a 7-6 record, giving their fans plenty to cheer about on the drive home.
On the other sideline, Rice dropped to 5-8. If you’re wondering how a team with a losing record ends up in a bowl game, welcome to the wonderful world of APR (Academic Progress Rate) scores. Because there weren’t enough six-win teams to fill all the bowl slots, Rice got the invite thanks to its players going to class. Unfortunately, high GPAs don’t tackle running backs, and it showed on the scoreboard.
The Bottom Line On the Armed Forces Bowl Incident
Friday in Fort Worth will be remembered for the scare, not the score. In a sport that obsesses over stats, transfer portals, and playoff brackets, moments like this remind us of the fragile reality behind the entertainment.
We saw a man fall from the sky and walk away. Texas State got a trophy. Rice got a participation ribbon for good grades. But the real MVP of the Armed Forces Bowl was undoubtedly the durability of that jumper. Here’s hoping the rest of the bowl season provides thrills that are strictly confined to the clock running out, rather than parachutes failing.
