WATCH: Backflipping Auburn Cheerleader Collides With Oklahoma Football Player

The Oklahoma Sooners football team got a rude awakening to life in the SEC last week, when it lost 25-15 to the Tennessee Volunteers. It seemed like the Auburn Tigers were looking to give Oklahoma another rude baptism into the toughest conference in the sport.

Or at least, their cheerleading team was.

The Tigers’ hype team was doing its pre-game routine to get the Auburn faithful at Jordan-Hare Stadium pumped up. The cheerleaders were doing their normal, steady diet of backflips, pom-pom waves, and death-defying feats of aerial coordination where they tossed each other in the sky.

(I mean seriously, how do they do those human catapult tricks? That takes a lot of guts and trust, and never fails to impress me).

But the timing was a bit off on Saturday. Either the Tigers’ routine went a little sideways, or the Sooners rushed out of the tunnel onto the field a little ahead of schedule (maybe a bit of both?). Either way, one Sooners player was trotting onto the field among the rest of his teammates, minding his own business. At the same time, one of the male cheerleaders was doing a sequence of backsprings that would make any Jedi knight proud. 

Unfortunately, that cheerleader and this one unsuspecting player collided with the force of a Mac truck, causing both to fall on a heap on the ground. If you look in the bottom-right corner of the frame, you can see the crash unfold.

Wow! That looks like it hurt! I would say the player got the worst end of the stick, but it looks like his protective gear saved the day. Meanwhile, the cheerleader looks like he’s going to need a solid ice bath after that one.

Moral of the story: Do NOT have the football and cheerleading teams on the field at the same time, because bad things happen.