Referring to Super Bowls

This seems like an opportune time to bring up something that my vague memory tells me I already did on this blog in some form or another a few years ago.  And that is the ridiculous way that Super Bowls are designated. 

It's pretentious enough that those in the National Football League leadership chose to implement their own system of counting years starting with Super Bowl "1" (this Sunday it will be Super Bowl "48"), but to aggravate things even more they have insisted on using Roman numerals instead of the Arabic ones we are accustomed to.  So I can say "Super Bowl 48", but I write "Super Bowl XLVIII".  In spite of the NFL's efforts to replace the old B.C./A.D. system (or BCE/CE if you prefer) of marking the years with "BSB/ASB" (which kind of implies that somebody sees football is being akin to a religion, doesn't it), nobody I know actually refers to old Super Bowl games this way.  Instead, they have a different problem when they refer to the calendar year...

For example, Super Bowl XL (or "40") took  place early in 2006 to determine the 2005 NFL championship in which Pittsburgh handled Seattle, 21-10.  But someone who refers to this game by saying "the 2005 Super Bowl" may be mistaken as referring to the game played in earlier in 2005 to determine the 2004 champion (which was New England).  On the other hand, using the actual year that the game was played in could be mistaken for the 2006 season...the Super Bowl championship which Indianapolis won.  As far as I can tell, the most common way to refer to a Super Bowl year is to use the season's designation.  So this year's Super Bowl between Seattle and Denver, although played in 2014, will be generally known as the "2013 Super Bowl".  Got all that? Good, because I may need you to tell me what I just said!

I discovered something else relating to past Super Bowls that surprised me.  For the first four years of this game, for the 1966-69 seasons, the National Football League and the American Football League were completely separate entities who sent their champions to face off for bragging rights in an unofficial, essentially exhibition contest...never mind that it was called "Super Bowl".  It wasn't until the 1970 season, when the NFL and AFL officially merged to form the NFL with National and American Conferences that the Super Bowl became the NFL championship game starting with the fifth game of the series.  So in spite of the fact that the New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in that famous "Super Bowl III" after the 1968 season, the NFL champion for that year was...the Baltimore Colts! The following year Kansas City in turn upset Minnesota 23-7 in their Super Bowl.  As it turns out, that season was Minnesota's turn to be NFL champions...in fact it has been their only NFL championship! Yet both the Jets and Chiefs have won a Super Bowl...although neither has ever officially won an NFL championship!