Feb. 20, 2023, GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- Dino Paganelli has risen to the pinnacle of the National Football League’s officiating ranks, including working the most recent Super Bowl as a back judge, his third Super Bowl assignment.
And, he said, a lot of the credit for his officiating career – as well as his 25 years as a high school teacher and coach at Wyoming Public Schools – goes to GRCC.
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Paganelli came to the college after his 1986 graduation from Wyoming Rogers High School, where he was a standout football, basketball and baseball player. In fact, it was baseball that brought him to GRCC as a scholarship student-athlete, playing his first year for Tom Hofmann and his second year for Doug Wabeke.
Early on in his journey to an associate degree, he took a class with Hofmann called simply “Sports Officiating.”
He recalled that class recently.
“I had some officiating in my family, but it was that class with the no-longer-with-us-but-oh-so-legendary Tom Hofmann that really started me on my officiating journey,” Paganelli said.
Indeed, that class led to two years of fall officiating for Paganelli at high schools across the area.
“I’ll never forget picking up some games at Lowell High School,” he said. “That was my first game. My high school best friend and I went out on a Saturday and did games from eight in the morning until one o’clock in the afternoon. Been doing games ever since.”
Paganelli’s most recent football officiating gig was a long way away from Lowell, Michigan.
In Glendale, Arizona, on Feb. 12, 2023, he worked his third Super Bowl, and he said the experience never gets old.
“It really is amazing,” he said this week as he looked back at Super Bowl LVII, won by the Kansas City Chiefs in a see-saw battle against the Philadelphia Eagles. “The NFL is a big business, and the Super Bowl is a big event. You’ve got the game obviously, the halftime show, there's a lot of moving parts.”
The build-up to the game, he added, does make the Super Bowl a bit different than regular season games or even other playoff games.
“By maybe Friday, Saturday you have to eliminate watching TV, ESPN and those sorts of things,” he said. “Because by then we’re so bombarded with information and it's like Super Bowl overload. By the time kickoff comes, every official is just ready to get the game started because of the hype.”
At that point, Paganelli said, the game becomes like a normal game – for the officials and the players – and instincts kick in.
“You do what you've been trained to do,” he said.
Having retired from his career as a high school teacher, Paganelli now is looking forward to a little downtime before heading back to lots of work next season with the NFL.
“It’s a long haul,” he said with a smile. “You know, we start with meetings in July and August is always a busy month. I think one August I was gone 21 or 22 days with training camps. And if you’re fortunate your season ends in February and you’re doing a championship or a Super Bowl.”
Still, he was quick to add, he loves the work. There’s no mandatory retirement age for NFL officials and Paganelli, at the age of 55, said he devotes a lot of time to staying sharp physically and mentally.
“I think you have to always do a self-reflection about your abilities,” he said. “More so than an age number, it's about ‘Am I still performing at a high level?’ I would like to think that if I continue to stay physically fit and my skill levels continue to remain the same or improve, I'd like to go 10 to 12 more years.”
And even after his retirement from football officiating, Paganelli said, he plans to give back to the profession by being a supervisor and staying involved in officiating in some sort of teaching fashion at either the professional or college levels.
In that regard, he said, he’d be following in the footsteps of his father, Carl Paganelli Sr., who was the supervisor of officiating for the Arena Football League and also had a long career as an on-field official at every level from high school to the USFL and the World League of American Football.
Carl Paganelli also was respected for his willingness to give back to the world of officiating, and Dino Paganelli said at GRCC he found others who were willing to invest in him.
“When I look back at my baseball experiences and my friendships as a student-athlete, it was still the best time of my life,” he said. “Playing baseball, meeting the friends that I did, the coaches and professors investing in you, growing academically, which I really needed, I have a really warm spot in my heart for GRCC. It was a perfect fit for me as it is for many.”
After his graduation from GRCC, Paganelli went on to play baseball for and graduate from Aquinas College with a bachelor’s degree in history in Physical Education. He then worked for almost four years, but felt the pull toward K-12 education and returned to Aquinas to earn a master’s in education and launch his 25-year career in Wyoming Public Schools, from which he retired in June 2022.
He also launched his officiating career, working high school and then the MIAA, GLIAC, MAC and Big Ten before getting the call from the NFL in 2006.
“My brother Perry was an assistant principal and teacher at Rogers and had also begun his officiating career,” Dino Paganelli said. “Rogers was a great place and very supportive of Perry, so I was drawn back there for that and other reasons, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made.”
Dino Paganelli is quick to point out that both Perry and his brother Carl Jr. are also NFL officials and GRCC alumni. Both also were student-athletes at GRCC, competing in football and baseball, and all four Paganellis were inducted in 2018 into the Grand Rapids Sports Hall of Fame.
GRCC in 2013 dedicated the foyer of the Gerald R. Ford Fieldhouse to the Paganelli family. The Paganelli Family Scholarship annually awards $1,000 to a GRCC student-athlete.
“GRCC has been an important part of the lives of the whole Paganelli family,” Dino Paganelli said. “That's one of the reasons we provide scholarships today. It’s because of what Grand Rapids Community College has done for us. It’s had an amazing impact on our lives.”
This story was reported by Phil de Haan.