By Jerry Carnes
ATLANTA — Sunday’s Super Bowl in Atlanta will be the fifty-third playing of the big game, but around here it’s known as Super Bowl LIII.
For decades, the NFL has kept count of Super Bowls using Roman numerals.
Why?
The very first Super Bowl was played on January 15, 1967. The Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs and were crowned Champions of the nineteen 1966 season.
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The owner of the Chiefs thought it was confusing to keep track of the Super Bowl by year when it awarded the champion from the previous year, so Lamar Hunt suggested using numbers. He thought the game deserved more than just “ordinary” numbers, and that’s how Hunt’s thoughts turned to Roman numerals.
The idea didn’t catch on until Super Bowl V, and the NFL then retroactively named the first four games as Super Bowls I, II, III, and IV.
The tradition took a break in 2016 when the NFL thought Super Bowl L sounded awkward. It’s known as Super Bowl 50.
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