Dear Joe,
Dave Binder just sent this email to me. I was pretty impressed by the precision of this ball delivery. Did you watch this game?
Love,
Dad
Delivering game balls to the official before a football game isn’t normally a big deal. Oh, maybe some famous former player will get to come and wave to the crowd before he hands the ball to the head ref, but it doesn’t often get creative.
Except, that is, during last weekend’s intrastate showdown between Michigan and Michigan State in Ann Arbor. For that, UM officials decided to look to the skies.
That’s how, after a year in the planning stages, Sgt. Adam Sniffen of the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, jumped from a Cessna several thousand feet above Michigan Stadium and parachuted into the largest football stadium in the country. Aside from the football and an American flag, Sniffen was also sporting a head-mounted videocam that contained a tongue switch in his mouth that would take still photos. More importantly, it recorded every nuance and maneuver that went into making such an insane leap.
Most fascinating perhaps is the tipping point where you can actually start to hear 109,933 crazed fans screaming as this expert paratrooper — who hasn’t missed a target in more than 800 career jumps — comes in and sticks the landing at the 3-yard-line.
