Super Experience
llen Baynes will never forget the phone call he received on Jan. 23.
The 1999 Auburn University Spanish graduate had been waiting for that call for years – the call to tell him he had been chosen to officiate his first career Super Bowl.
“The phone rang,” said Baynes, an NFL official since 2008. “It was my position supervisor, Doug Rosenbaum, and he said, ‘I’ve got some good and bad news for you.’ I said, ‘Well, give me the bad news first.’ He said, ‘Keep your travel bag out because you’re still traveling, and the good news is that you’ve had a great year and you’re being assigned to work the Super Bowl.’
“It was so special to call my wife and tell her, and there were a lot of tears and a lot of excitement. Calling my dad was something really special, too, and it is one of those moments in your life you’ll never forget.”
Amazingly, Baynes was the third person in his family to officiate a Super Bowl.
“I feel like I can sit at the big kids’ table now,” Baynes said. “The funny thing is that, with Super Bowl XXXIII between the Broncos and the Falcons, you had a Shanahan coaching, a McCaffrey playing and a Baynes officiating, and we had the same thing this year. Christian McCaffrey said it was like we’ve come full circle, and we thought that was neat.”
In 2023, Baynes joined his father (Class of 2019) and brother Rusty (Class of 2022) as a member of the Alabama Sports Officials Hall of Fame, further cementing the family’s legacy in the state.
EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME
The Super Bowl and everything around it matched the hype for Baynes. From the Las Vegas mystique to pregame rehearsal — where he had the chance to meet country music legend Reba McEntire — Baynes relished his time in the Entertainment Capital of the World. The game itself was a thrill he will not soon forget.
Baynes has the distinction of officiating one of just two Super Bowls to go to overtime — the other being Super Bowl LI in 2016 — a game won by the Chiefs in thrilling fashion. Customarily, officials hurry off the field following a game, but Baynes said he and the rest of the seven-man officiating crew stayed to take in the atmosphere at Allegiant Stadium after the Chiefs’ win.
“Some veteran officials told us to not be in a hurry to leave that field because that confetti is just as much yours as it is the team’s that won the game,” he said. “Everyone on TV is watching the team celebrate, but if you look in the background, you see a group of officials exchanging handshakes and hugs because we’d worked a really good game, worked hard to get there, and then it was time to enjoy it. It was a feeling like I’ve never had, to be able to look up in the stands and see my parents, my wife and my kids up there.”
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
The youngest of six children of Marie and Ronnie, Baynes grew up watching his father officiate. Baynes began working as a football official in 1995 while a student at Auburn, refereeing area high school games and intramural games on the Plains.
After graduating in 1999, Baynes kept working high school games to get experience, leading to his professional break in 2000 with the Chicago-based Arena Football League II. After a two-year stint there, Baynes began working for Conference USA in 2001 and also officiated games for the Arena Football League and NFL Europe, working five seasons in places like Scotland, Germany, Amsterdam and Barcelona, Spain, from 2003-07.
Baynes, who graduated with a degree in Spanish from the College of Liberal Arts, said he was fortunate to have a foreign languages education and only wished he took advantage of study abroad programs before working across the world. In 2003, while working an NFL Europe game in Barcelona, Baynes still used what he’d learned a decade prior.
“My parents happened to be there, as my dad also worked for the NFL,” Baynes said. “As we left Barcelona, my dad told me, ‘I can see why you wanted to study abroad in college now. Your Spanish is much better after speaking the language for a week and immersing in the Spanish culture.’ Even 10 years after graduation, I was still able to get our crew around Spain, speaking their language, and it was all because of my studies at Auburn.”
He kept going strong with the Conference USA and Arena Football League gigs until 2008, when he was “called up” to the NFL. Baynes worked his first NFL playoff game in 2010 and has officiated nearly a dozen postseason games during his career.
“The Auburn Family has even expanded into my officiating family, and we love to talk about how great it is to be alumni of Auburn University,” Baynes said. “It is also neat to see Auburn football alumni play on Sundays, and many will come up to me and say, ‘War Eagle,’ since several know that I graduated from Auburn.”