The big payoff - Super Bowl XL

"There has never been a Super Bowl with such a marketable number attached to it," reports the New York Times.

Ten years ago, the N.F.L. and other businesses looking to profit from the Super Bowl could not play off the entendres of XXX. Ten years from now will be Super Bowl L, which will be big, but not this big. Everything in between, filled with chicken scratches and consonants, tends to be little more than Roman graffiti.

Roman graffiti would be stuff like XXXVIII, which happened two years ago. (Imagine having to add that to XXIII. The reason you don't is because the Arabs saved our butts.)

"A lot of people probably think the N.F.L. invented Roman numerals," Janoff said. "I don't think they've copyrighted it, but they pretty much own it."

And they can have it, as far as I'm concerned.

(And who but a marketing guy could imagine copyrighting Roman numerals, I wonder.)

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