Why the Super Bowl Uses Roman Numerals and What It Reveals about Eternal Truth

Jim Denison

This Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs will play the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX. The Los Angeles Dodgers won the 2024 World Series; the Boston Celtics won the 2024 NBA Finals; and the Florida Panthers won the 2024 Stanley Cup.

Why does the NFL use Roman numerals when no other league does?

The answer is simple. The Super Bowl is held in the calendar year following the beginning of the league’s regular season schedule. So, would Sunday’s game be the 2024 NFL Championship, even though it’s played in 2025? Would it be the 2025 NFL Championship, even though it culminates the 2024 season? Of course, the league could use common numerals, making this Sunday’s game Super Bowl 58. However, Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt suggested in 1970 that the big game employ Roman numerals instead, lending the game a kind of gravitas as a major event.

Mr. Hunt is also credited with coining the name “Super Bowl.” This was after he helped launch the American Football League to compete with the National Football League (the two merged in 1970, creating the AFC and the NFC). He also established the Dallas Texans, who soon became the Kansas City Chiefs. His son, Clark Hunt, continues to lead the team, turning them into one of the league’s most successful franchises. If the Chiefs are victorious Sunday, they will become the first team in NFL history to win three straight Super Bowls.

And so, in three days the world will participate in the continuing legacy of Lamar Hunt. But in my mind, the remarkable success of the NFL, the Super Bowl, and the Chiefs are not his most significant achievement. It was my privilege to be the pastor of Clark Hunt and his family in Dallas. They are among the most gracious, humble people I have ever known.

Their personal integrity is Lamar Hunt’s most enduring legacy, one that will continue far beyond this Sunday’s game.

Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar

The contest will be significant for other reasons as well:

Donald Trump is expected to become the first sitting US president to attend the game. He will also tape an interview with Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier that will air during the pregame show.
The Super Bowl will be played at the New Orleans Superdome, which has hosted more legendary sports moments than any other venue in the country. The NFL vows that the venue will be the “safest place to be” on Sunday night.
Music superstar Taylor Swift will be attending, sitting in a suite that costs a reported $2 million per ticket.
By contrast, Kendrick Lamar, who won five Grammys last Sunday, will perform at the halftime show for free. This is typical for Super Bowl performers; the boost to their careers more than offsets any payment they forego.

However, it’s doubtful that any of this will endure in our collective minds for long. Even the contest itself will be truly memorable only for the winner, and only for a short time for the rest of us. Do you remember who lost last year’s Super Bowl? What about the year before, or the year before that? Who won the game three years ago? Ten years ago?

This is the way of our frenetic, news-driven, constantly changing society. Cultural “vibes,” prizing feelings over facts and mood over meaning, are the currency of our day. “Social proof,” amplified in the digital age, is undoubtedly powerful in shaping our decision-making.

In this regard, there is good news for the good news of the gospel:

Joe Rogan, considered the most popular podcaster in the world, recently hosted Christian apologist Wesley Huff for a conversation about the truthfulness of our faith. Their discussion has 5.9 million views on YouTube so far.
Bible sales are booming.
Noted atheist Richard Dawkins is now calling himself a “cultural Christian.”
Famed scholars Niall Ferguson and his wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali have become public Christians.
Popular influencer Jordan Peterson’s latest book affirms the Judeo-Christian worldview as foundational to society and states that the proclamation of “man as an image of God” is “perhaps the greatest idea ever revealed.”
Young men are showing more interest in religion than in many years.

But as with Sunday’s Super Bowl, today’s headlines can quickly become tomorrow’s old news.

“If We Don’t Know What Kind of God God Is”

This is why we need always to remember that “the Lᴏʀᴅ reigns forever” (Psalm 146:10 HCSB). He alone is the king of the universe. He alone has the power to bring us the purpose and significance we long to experience.

To my point: Americans are wealthier than ever but less happy. As sociologist James Davison Hunter has observed, nihilism (the belief that life has no overarching purpose) is the prevailing sentiment of our post-Christian, secularized culture. The only power we truly possess is the capacity to choose how we will respond to our powerlessness.

By contrast, God alone “satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Psalm 103:5).

Israel’s most beloved king acknowledged this fact as he prayed, “With you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9).
The wisest man who ever lived agreed: “Trust in the Lᴏʀᴅ with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6).
Paul was one of the great scholars of Judaism (Acts 22:3) and “blameless” under the law (Philippians 3:6), but he testified that he “suffered the loss of all things” by comparison to “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (v. 8).

When we experience personally a God who is love, our lives are suffused with significance and joy. A. W. Tozer was right: “Faith is confidence in the character of God, and if we don’t know what kind of God God is, we can’t have faith.”

According to the scholar D. A. Carson,