Moments before kickoff at Saturday’s BYU-ECU battle in Greenville, North Carolina, a pair of F-15 pilots connected to BYU will deliver the first play of the game by zipping over Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium during the national anthem.
Captain Morgan Curriden, an F-15E instructor pilot, and Lieutenant Colonel Samuel B. Eliason, director of operations for the 4th Operations Support Squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base near Goldsboro, will share the same fly path in their respective jets, but their journey to this moment couldn’t be more different.
“It is literally the fulfillment of a dream I’ve had since I was a little kid,” Curriden told the “Y’s Guys” livestream show this week. “I’ve always been a Cougar fan. My parents met at BYU, and I’ve always wanted to be a fighter pilot. For me, doing the flyover is the pinnacle of both things I’ve (dreamed about) my whole life.”
Curriden, a Las Vegas native, graduated from BYU in 2017 with a degree in Arabic. Not only will Saturday fulfill a lifelong desire, but it will also be the first football flyover of his career.
“I was close to doing (one) at a BYU home game two years ago,” he said. “We were in the final stages of coordination, but there were some real-world things that happened, and the jets needed to get reassigned and unfortunately we had to fall out.”
As of midweek, all systems were go for Saturday night.
“I’ve been stationed at this base for five years,” he said. “And I’ve had this game circled literally since I got here because I knew how close they (BYU) were going to be to Seymour Johnson (AFB).”
Eliason’s journey began in Ohio where he graduated as a Bobcat in 2008 with a degree in electrical engineering. His conversion from Judaism to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints started at a pilot training seminar in 2011.
“Somebody told us in one of our classes that people who went to church do 10% better at pilot training,” Eliason told the “Y’s Guys” livestream show. “I was willing to do anything to get into a fighter jet.”
He went to synagogue and his wife Ashley returned to full activity as a Latter-day Saint.
“In our Air Force assignments, there were no synagogues around, so, I committed to going to church with my wife,” Eliason said. “I dwelt among the Cougar Nation for quite a while and had a lot of friends who were BYU alumni.”
Clark Haymond, an Air Force pilot and BYU grad, baptized Eliason in Doha, Qatar, in 2023.
“He flew out and baptized me and another fighter pilot confirmed me,” Eliason said. “My crewmate out there was a big Ute guy — he would be dying if he knew I was supporting the Cougars.”
While Eliason’s conversion to the church took a while, developing a passion for BYU needed only one season — and one player.
“As a convert from Judaism, last season was really the thing that got me hooked with Jake Retzlaff — BYUJew,” Eliason said. “I just could not stop watching the Cougars or stop watching him. I was really hopeful that I might get to meet him at this game, but obviously things didn’t work out that way.”
Retzlaff, the first Jewish quarterback in program history, led the Cougars to an 11-2 season and No. 13 final ranking in the 2024 AP Top 25 poll before transferring to Tulane during the summer.
Saturday will also be the first football flyover for Eliason. Both he and Curriden will take off from Seymour Johnson AFB 30 minutes before kickoff. The two jets, carrying flags from both teams, will be cruising nearly 400 miles per hour when they arrive over the stadium.
“With the timing of kickoff, we should be doing the flyover right at twilight,” Curriden said. “So, we are planning to light the burner cans (afterburners) right over the stadium. I think anybody there is going to see quite a show.”
The fans will roar when the jets go by. Both co-pilots have Pirate ties, but the fact that BYU guys are doing the flying, with Curriden wearing his Cougar blue flight helmet, is nothing short of a mid-air mutiny for the visiting team.
“I think that speaks to the BYU fan base,” Curriden said. “I’ve been all over the world with the Air Force and everywhere I go I run into BYU fans. All you have to do is wear a BYU hat or BYU shirt. I’ve met BYU fans in some really cool places.”
On Saturday, Curriden and Eliason will fly over a lot of BYU fans — from a really cool place — the cockpit of their F-15s. The pilots will return to Seymour Johnson and drive an hour back to Greensboro to watch the game, cheer on the Cougars and cap a night that has been years in the making.
Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com.