Who is #HotRef?

For football fans and active Twitter users, the Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year. Between the big plays, big players, weird commercials, and Beyonce, there’s a lot to talk and tweet about. What was #SB50‘s hottest topic? #HotRef.

Clete Blakeman, now better known to the world as “The Hot Ref,” was the lead official in Sunday night’s showdown against the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers. A huge chunk of Twitter’s viewing audience seemed much more interested in referee No. 34’s good looks than good calls — Andy Cohen included.

And as it turns out, Hot Ref just happens to hail from Hurrdat’s home state of Nebraska.

Blakeman is a 51-year-old Omaha lawyer and former Husker. He played backup quarterback at Nebraska from 1984 to 1987. Blakeman began working as an NFL field judge in 2008 and made the switch to referee two years later. This year wasn’t his first Super Bowl rodeo, but it was his first one as lead official.

Also, he’s married with two kids. Sorry, everyone.

Super Bowl 50 had the third-largest viewing audience of any telecast in U.S. TV history — that’s about 111.9 million people. Tweeting along? According to Twitter, the game racked up 27 million tweets and 4.3 billion views of tweets on and off Twitter. Hot Ref dominated enough of that chatter to earn his own parody account, @hotreferee, by the third quarter.

Blakeman’s popularity even earned him a special guest spot with Kathie Lee and Hoda on The Today Show, accompanied by his wife Katie.

Here are a few more of our favorite tweets on America’s favorite ref:

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