Chewelah Grad Michael Barone Reflects on Covering Seahawks’ Super Bowl

For Chewelah High School graduate Michael Barone, covering the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots was an experience like no other. Barone, now a photojournalist with KHQ in Spokane, spent more than a week in San Francisco, Calif., leading up to the game. Barone said the magnitude of the moment did not fully sink in until game day.

“While I was in the Bay Area for over a week before the game, I don't think it fully hit me that I was covering the Super Bowl until I was walking up to Levi's Stadium on gameday next to the reporters and my fellow photojournalists. The mass of Seahawks fans and a giant 12 flag flying over Levi's really sold it to me,” Barone said.

As he took in the sea of blue and green, he reflected on how far he had come from his small-town roots.

“If you told me right after I graduated from Chewelah that I'd work at the news station I grew up seeing on TV, I don't think I'd believe you. If you then told me I'd go cover the biggest sporting event in the U.S., I'd think you were insane,” Barone said.

Preparing for the assignment required more than just booking hotels and mapping out interviews. Barone said he approached the trip with added attention to detail, knowing he would be hundreds of miles from the station’s resources.

“For the most part, I treated this trip like I would for any other long distance trip with two caveats: I needed to pick out my Hawaiian shirts way in advance and I had to make sure my gear would be safe for a 900-mile drive to San Francisco and the hundreds of miles I'd be driving throughout the Bay Area during the trip. I think I drove a little over 2,400 miles for the whole trip,” he said.

Because he was so far from home base, Barone carefully inspected every piece of equipment before leaving.

“I basically had to go through my normal camera kit and asked myself, ‘What if this stops working?’ or ‘Can I fix that part if it fails while I'm on the road?’," Barone said. "On a normal basis, I'm usually within driving distance from KHQ and I know that if something fails, I can get it fixed quickly or have someone run backup gear to me."

Barone said the only hiccups he had with equipment was a mic flag that needed to be fixed, easily remedied with a trip to a Bay Area hardware store, and a tripod that he fixed by borrowing a screwdriver from a Boston news crew. 

Throughout Super Bowl week, the energy across the Bay Area was palpable. Even in 49ers territory, conversations about the game were everywhere.

“Very energetic! At any given time, you could throw a rock and find a dozen people to talk to about the game,” Barone said. “But seeing as we were in 49ers territory, their fans were, at best, begrudgingly supporting the Seahawks and in general, were pouting that the Seahawks were playing on their turf. Raiders fans were all super nice though. Luckily, as the week progressed, we found more and more Seahawks fans who were much more enthusiastic to talk to.”

One moment stood out above the rest; Barone said the day before the game, Seahawks fans gathered near the Golden Gate Bridge for a celebration as a plane flew overhead trailing a massive 12 flag.

“The Beast Bus showed up, Macklemore and Allen Stone music was blasting, 12 flags were waving, and fans just celebrated with complete strangers over their joint love of the Seahawks," Barone said. "I did feel a little bad for the random tourists who showed up during the party – it must have been a bit overwhelming.”

Barone’s job also included lighthearted moments with players, including testing their pronunciation of local place names.

“Asking Boye Mafe to pronounce Pend Oreille and his best attempt was ‘Penned O'reilly’ or asking Charles Cross to pronounce Coeur d'Alene just to hear ‘Cord dee-Allen’ after 30 seconds,” Barone said.

Behind the scenes, however, covering the Super Bowl involved navigating varying levels of media access and adapting quickly to changing circumstances.

“There's a huge variety of access media gets depending on the day. For example, I was freely able to interview players during the week leading up to the game and could enter nearly every NFL event I wanted without an issue, but on gameday, I couldn't get my camera in or even near the stadium until the game was over,” he said.

Barone also found himself reminded that the Super Bowl meant something different to every fan he encountered.

“It's also very easy to forget that every fan has a personal story connecting them to the game, whether they actually get into the game or not," Barone said."Sometimes that story is as simple as a lifelong fan finally had the money to go or the sisters who drove from Yakima to see the game together. Other times, it's meeting a man who came to honor his late father who took him to the Seahawk's first Super Bowl championship and wanted to share the same memory with his son.”

Logistics presented their own hurdles, especially navigating Bay Area traffic with more than 50 pounds of gear in tow.

“Almost all of the jokes you've heard about California traffic are true,” Barone said. “From the traffic jams adding an hour to every morning commute, to driverless cars cutting you off, to hitting surface street traffic so thick that it had me seriously considering parking over a mile from my destination and lugging my 50+ pounds of gear because it would probably be faster. And that's not accounting for the infamous San Francisco hills, which were both the most fun and most terrifying streets to drive.”

The unpredictable nature of live television meant flexibility was essential as well.

“Every morning, we'd come up with plans for the day, just to completely change them an hour or two later,” he said. “I went down to the waterfront with Leslie Lowe to talk with fans, only to end up interviewing the Sea Lions at Pier 39 because they were so vocal. Whenever I'd show up to an event, there was a chance the story would appear on its own or a piece of equipment failed and completely derailed everything we had planned. Oh, the anchors' lights broke? Better run them the backup set I brought along and change up how I'm lighting my reporter for the evening shows. Is that Jameis Winston throwing burgers at people? Let's go talk to him.”

For students in Chewelah who dream of a similar path, Barone emphasized passion and willingness to take risks.

“It's impossible to narrow down all the paths that could lead you to working in the news or covering sports, but the biggest thing I would say is that you need to actually care about what you're doing and take a chance on yourself,” he said. “I'm not a big sports guy and barely studied journalism in college, but because I care so deeply about my work, I've gone from almost no news experience to having stories go national, entering the Emmys, and traveling to the Super Bowl in a little under two years at KHQ!”

He encouraged young people to put themselves out there, even if their path is unconventional.

“Before KHQ, I worked as a radio station operator, a movie theatre manager, a soap company marketing guy, and as a freelance filmmaker because, for a lot of people, telling stories with a camera isn't a way to actually earn a living," Barone said. "Then one day, I saw an opening as a photojournalist and just went for it. Because they took a chance on me and because I put so much effort into the stories I work on, I got to where I am now.”

As for unexpected highlights, Barone ended up making a cameo appearance in a national advertisement.

“I ended up in the background of a Carl's Jr. advertisement,” he said. “My reporter, Noah Boelter, and I were out trying to talk to fans on the street when we stumbled upon Jameis Winston, quarterback for the Giants, giving out free burgers and asking people about their regrets. I still don't understand why those two things should have been combined. Somehow, we were able to convince his manager to let us interview him after he finished filming his promos. So now, I'm a blurry, Hawaiian shirt-wearing cameraman behind Jameis as he talks about free burgers online.”

From Chewelah to the Super Bowl stage, Barone shows what a journey a small-town graduate from Stevens County can be.