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Posted by: David Bunch

The New York Times has this interesting piece about the NFL's use of Roman Numerals to count Super Bowls.

This year being Super Bowl 40, the numerals are XL which also stand for "extra large".

So the NFL and marketers are having a jumbo time using this for their purposes.

It has been 20 years — make that XX years — since only two letters — er,numerals — were needed to make counting Super Bowls this simple. Only two years ago, for Super Bowl XXXVIII, it took seven Roman numerals.

This one may be the ultimate designation, succinctly supersized in a language everyone can understand: XL.

"It works the best," Barry Janoff, executive editor of Brandweek, a marketing trade magazine, said by phone from New York. "You're thinking extra large, you're thinking excel. You can really play with it."

Finally freed of the cumbersome numerals of the past — last year's XXXIX became the structure for a bridge on Jacksonville's
Super Bowl logo — the league can sell this game with something simple and bold, prerequisites to memorable logos. A dominating red X and a blue L are swiped across the middle by a small banner that reads Super Bowl in small block letters, meant to evoke a car's odometer and provide a tie to Detroit's auto industry.

Not matter the outcome this Super Bowl is sure to stand out, especially in 10 years when we'll have, merely, Super Bowl L.