Augie grad celebrates a Super job with NFL
By Rachel Davis
Work and play are literally combined in Austin Elledge’s job with the National Football League, and Sunday will be a pretty big work day.
A 2020 Augustana College alum, Elledge will go into his Los Angeles office on the 57th Super Bowl Sunday, where he works as a graphic designer and animator.
Since September 2020, he’s worked on making graphics and meeting other creative needs for NFL social channels (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.); working with marketing and sales to develop motion and still graphics for NFL partnerships, and supporting player and club social media with graphic requests.
While the NFL is headquartered in New York City, it has 500 media and marketing staff in L.A., including studios for the NFL Network. Their building is next to the new SoFi Stadium (home to the Rams and Chargers), which opened in September 2020.
Elledge is part of a 10-member social media team. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl (in which the Kansas City Chiefs face the Philadelphia Eagles), he’s also been busy prepping for tonight’s NFL Honors ceremony, to start at 8 p.m. CST.
Usually hosted in the Super Bowl city, the event will be hosted by Kelly Clarkson in Phoenix, and the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes is up for and heavily favored to win the NFL’s MVP Award and Chris Jones is up for Defensive Player of the Year honors.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame will also elect up to five members to their Class of 2023. There are three players who played in Kansas City who are finalists.
Since the Super Bowl was in L.A. last year, Elledge and other staff attended the NFL Honors event then, though very few employees (executives) got to go to the Big Game. Last year, the Rams defeated the Bengals; the Chiefs nabbed the championship in 2020 and the Eagles won their only Lombardi Trophy in 2018.
“The NFL is pretty stingy on giving out tickets, obviously,” Elledge said Thursday, noting the league raffles off just two SoFi seats each week to staff during the regular season. He’s never been to an NFL game yet.
According to Forbes, the average ticket for Sunday’s game at State Farm Stadium is going for $9,000, making Super Bowl LVII the second-most expensive in NFL history.
He said last year’s Super Bowl (where the L.A. Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20) was the worst, since he had to work that day.
“I had created Bengals Super Bowl Champion graphics that morning, and I spent about seven or eight hours on that and then they lost the game and I went home,” Elledge said. “I didn’t get to watch the game.”
This Sunday, he hopes to actually watch the game, in the office.
“It’s exciting to be around the office at this time. I walked in today, and there were balloons everywhere in the lobby,” Elledge said. “I mean it’s our Super Bowl.”
Basketball at Augie
He’s from Highland, Ill., 32 miles east of St. Louis, and played basketball (point guard) all four years of high school and all during college. In Elledge’s freshman year at Augie, the Vikings made the Division III Championship game in Salem, Va., but lost by one point (to Babson College), he said.
He loved his time at Augie in Rock Island, which he called “amazing.” Elledge majored in graphic design and marketing.
“It was small, but it was a community. I kinda knew everyone and was friends with everyone,” he said.
“The small class sizes played a pivotal role in allowing me to get authentic feedback, criticism and support I’ve been able to carry into my professional career,” Elledge said. “Augustana 100% prepared me for life after school. I have my Augie ‘A’ sitting on my desk as a reminder.”
He originally was accepted in February 2020 for a summer internship with ESPN in Connecticut, but COVID dashed that dream.
“I was a little unsure if the money would be there or what kind of opportunities there were, but luckily I found a good gig here,” Elledge said Thursday of the NFL.
His first season working for the big league was spent working remotely from his Illinois home.
“I really didn’t think it would be that serious of a job until I actually got it and figured out what I was,” Elledge said.
A busy year-round job
Despite the season ending in February, Elledge said he’s busy year-round, except in July (the NFL typically gives staff vacation during week of July 4).
“It definitely is weird because our off-season, you’d think is after the Super Bowl and into that period, but our office is busy really until after draft,” he said of the NFL Draft, which is in late April. “A lot of people don’t realize how big the draft promo stuff is. I mean, the Super Bowl is nothing compared to what we have to do for draft.”
Growing up near St. Louis, Elledge was a big St. Louis Rams fan, a loyalty that didn’t extend when the Rams moved back to L.A. after the 2015 season. The Rams were in St. Louis from 1995-2015, before moving back to Los Angeles, where the team had played from 1946 to 1994.
“It’s just not a St. Louis franchise anymore and they’re different teams, totally different,” Elledge said. “They changed all their branding and it’s just not the same.”
He was too young to recall the Hall of Fame quarterback (and Iowa native) Kurt Warner era in St. Louis, but Elledge said he sees Warner a lot, since he works for NFL Network, downstairs in the same building.
“Legendary NFL players are downstairs doing TV broadcast and stuff like that,” Elledge said.
He will be rooting for the Kansas City team to win this Sunday in their fifth Super appearance (they are 2-2 in the Big Games, in 1967, 1970, 2020 and 2021).
“Both have great storylines and. you know, Philadelphia fans are probably a larger market than the Chiefs, so from the NFL perspective, you want the Eagles to win. But I think I’m rooting for the Midwest team here,” Elledge said.
Super Bowl LVII will be broadcast starting at 5:30 p.m. on FOX 18.
