WHAT IS THIS ODD AMERICAN PHENOMENON, THE "SUPERB OWL"?

(I apologize to those who've already been exposed to some of the following thoughts via an e-mail I sent a few days ago. Then again, I should probably apologize to anyone who stumbles across it while meandering through the blogosphere.)


In the process of reading an online piece by a colleague in the sporting press, I came across the early betting line on the next Superbowl, which was referred to as Superbowl XL. This caused me, a person with obviously not very much on his mind, to wonder why they had chosen that enumerative option. XL. It's a perfectly valid way of Roman Numeralizing 40, of course, but not the only one. Why not, say, Superbowl XXXX, which sets a considerably more salacious and intriguing tone, or at least reads like a brand of manly bootleg whiskey? On the downside, XXXX somehow calls to mind Vin Diesel and stolen car crashes, which is perhaps not the image the NFL wants to project as it walks yea through the valley of FCC commissioners. By comparison, "Superbowl XL" sounds like the sporty deluxe model Superbowl, with the 6-cylinder engine and leather steering wheel cover.

And what are they going to do nine years from now? Will the 49th installment of the NFL's annual marketing orgy be referred to as Superbowl XXXXIX, which is more letters than a lot of football fans and current American presidents can handle? Or do they go with Superbowl IL, which is lean and simple but which reads like the postal address of a desperate-for-attention small town in Illinois?

And is anyone really ready to deal with Superbowl L, which comes across like a kind of drunken slurring of "Superbowl"? Superbowllll...zzz.

Not to mention Superbowl LIV, about which you can already hear Jay Leno saying, "What's the deal with this? I thought the Superbowls were all live!"

And as for Superbowl LIX, let's not even go there.