Allen Baynes will never forget a phone call he received on Jan. 23.
The 1999 Auburn University graduate had been waiting for that call for years, and when it came, it brought with it a feeling he had never experienced. It was no ordinary call for a chat, it was the call to tell him he had been chosen to officiate his first career Super Bowl.
Baynes, a Tallassee, Alabama, native, was selected as a side judge for Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs on Feb. 11. A 16-year-veteran National Football League (NFL) official, Baynes had worked the AFC Championship Game and NFC Championship Game twice apiece, but had never been selected for the “big game.”
That all changed in January, and he remembers the moment vividly.
“I was getting ready to go to the cell phone store for a new case and cover for my phone, and 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.
His brothers, Rusty and Mark, are both Auburn University at Montgomery graduates and U.S. Marine Reservists who have worked as officials. Their father, Ronnie Baynes, not only rose to the level of NFL official, but worked Super Bowl XXIX in 1995 and Super Bowl XXXIII in 1999 before taking a leadership role in the league as head of officials. Rusty also rose to the rank of NFL official and has two Super Bowls on his résumé, Super Bowl 50 in 2016 and Super Bowl LV in 2021.
“I feel like I can sit at the big kids’ table now,” Baynes said of joining his father and brother as Super Bowl officials. “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.