II's company, III's a crowd

An era has come to a close, my peeps. Sound the funeral trumpets. Break out the black arm bands. Drug addicts, this is your chance to blow through the rest of that black tar heroin you’ve been saving for, well, anything.

Starting in 2016, the Super Bowl will be dropping Roman numerals from its logo.

You read about this kind of thing, but you never think it’ll happen to you.

At least we’ve got some time to get used to the idea. When the 49th Super Bowl is played in Arizona next February, all of the graphics and promotional materials for the event will be smattered with that comforting string of nonsensical capital letters, just daring you to guess what the hell they signify. In that old-timey numbering system, “49” is written as “”XLIV,” which I’m pretty sure is a common first name in Botswana. 

But the following year, when groundskeepers in the San Francisco Bay area paint the giant Super Bowl logo in the middle of the field, there’ll be nothing Roman about it. It’ll read “Super Bowl 50,” and that’s that. There’s something pedestrian and unimposing about that, a perceived demotion in status. It’s like the biggest football game of the year is transitioning from a glamorous, worldwide spectacle to a podunk 5K road race benefiting victims of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Roman numerals just make things seem more important. It’s that simple. It implies an unimpeachable tradition, a phenomenon immune to the rigors of time. When the New England Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI (and XXXVIII, and XXXIX), it felt like a bigger deal than just victory in a football game. It was like they had etched their name onto an epic history dating back to the Romans themselves. One pictured toga-clad men and women with fig leaves in their hair, waving giant foam fingers in a marble stadium and paying ten bucks for gross domestic beer.

As a wee tot, in the days of slap bracelets and M.C. Hammer, I was a huge fan of professional wrestling. Sure, I admit it. Nowadays, if I watched five minutes of it, I’d probably tie my knickers in a noose and hang myself from a shower rod, but 25 years ago, whoa Nelly. I was a Hulkamaniac to the nth degree, a bodyslam-lovin’ buffoon. Each year, the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) would host an extravaganza called Wrestlemania, an event that still takes place to this day. They always tack a Roman numeral to the end of it, and it’s a good thing they do. Otherwise, it’d be exposed as a three-hour-long jamboree of grown dudes in garish underwear slapping each other’s man-boobs. 

They needed the old-fashioned numbering system to lend it legitimacy, and it worked, at least when I was 8. And children have a warped sense of what numbers mean; chalk it up to a youthful inability to fully comprehend the scale and scope of things. When I sat down to watch Wrestlemania VII – in which Hulk Hogan took back the championship belt from creepy uncle look-alike Sergeant Slaughter – it felt as though I were witness to an important world event. On a conscious level, I knew that “VII” only meant “seven,” which made Wrestlemania younger than I was. Subconsciously, I figured if it had a title in need of careful deciphering, then it must have deep consequences for the fate of the world. As far as I was I was concerned, Hogan winning the belt back meant there’d be world peace, an end to hunger, and free ice cream for everyone. None of those things materialized. I’m still hoping for free ice cream.

Ah, and lest you think this grand numerical tradition is limited to sports-like events in which giant meatheads smash into each other, let’s not forget about movies, especially the ones in which giant meatheads smash into each other. Not every movie franchise does this, but certain iconic series have turned Roman numerals into a kind of badge, one that says, “There will be at least five of these, and each will be totally epic.”

Specifically, I’m thinking of the Rocky flicks. Sylvester Stallone hasn’t done a whole lot of things right, and that extends to the simple act of speaking, an arena that makes him sound like a swollen-tongued drunkard awakening from a deep coma. But the one spot-on decision he made was to slap a Roman number at the end of each Rocky sequel, of which there are roughly 73 total. They vary in quality from pretty-darn-good to oh-crap-this-is-embarassing, but even if you watch one of the weaker ones, it feels like a pivotal happenstance. “Rocky IV,” when you get right down to it, is a train wreck, all musical montages and lingering shots of rippled abdomens. You enjoy it anyway because it’s “Rocky IV.” If it was just “Rocky 4?” Gimme a friggin’ break.

Perhaps the reason we view ancient Rome as a testament to grandeur is their pioneering work in the arena of spectator sport. The nature of sports has changed pretty dramatically since then – fewer lions, less blood, and the newfound prevalence of beer hats come to mind – but the essence is the same: A bunch of people sitting around a stadium seeking thrills. (And booze.) The Super Bowl, more so than other sports championships, is one of the few remaining vestiges of that era, a brightly lit stage besmattered with a liberal splash of tradition. 

Now granted, 50 in Roman numerals is simply “L,” and “Super Bowl L” looks more like a T-shirt size than it does the pinnacle of football. But the pivot to run-of-the-mill digits is a wimpy move, a cold shoulder turned to our Roman forebears. Stripped of confusing characters, the event suddenly seems like just a simple football game. 

And what a warped perspective that is.