Updated Monday, January 30, 2012 at 09:48 PM
NEW YORK — Kids LOL and OMG each other all the livelong day, but ask them to decipher the XLVI of this year's Super Bowl and you might as well be talking Greek.
They may know what X means, or V and I, but Roman numerals beyond the basics have largely gone the way of cursive penmanship as a subject in the nation's schools.
Students in high school and junior high get a taste of the Roman system during Latin (where Latin is still taught, anyway). And they learn a few Roman numerals in history class when they study the monarchs of Europe.
But in elementary school, "Roman numerals are a minor topic," said Jeanine Brownell, of the early mathematics development program at Erickson Institute, a child-development graduate school in Chicago.
That's not how Joe Horrigan remembers it.
"I went to Catholic school. I still have bruised knuckles from not learning them," said the NFL historian and spokesman for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
What's wrong with good ol' 46, as in this year's Super Bowl between the Giants and the Patriots on Sunday?
" 'Number 46,' it just kind of sounds like an inventory. 'Inspected by Joe,' " said Horrigan, who is LX years old. "Those Roman numerals, they're almost like trophies."
"My son is in first grade and this recently came up when we were clock shopping," said Eileen Wolter, of Summit, N.J. "He couldn't believe they were real numbers. They only ever get used for things like copyrights or sporting events, which in my humble opinion hearkens even further back to the gladiatorial, barbaric nature of things like the Super Bowl."
Gerard Michon isn't much of a football fan, either, but he keeps a close eye on Super Bowls over at Numericana.com, the website where he dissects math and physics and discusses the Roman system ad nauseam.
Starting with Super Ball XLI in 2007, he has been getting an abnormal number of game-day visits from football fans with a sudden interest in Roman numerals.
On the day of last year's Super Bowl XLV, so many people visited that Michon's little server crashed. When the dust cleared, he had logged 15,278 hits, more than 90 percent for "XLV."
The use of Roman numerals to designate Super Bowls began with game V in 1971, in which the Baltimore Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys 16-13 on Jim O'Brien's 32-yard field goal with five seconds remaining. Numerals I through IV were added later for the first four Super Bowls.
Dan Masonson, director of the league's corporate communications, said the Roman system was adopted to avoid any confusion that might occur because of the way the Super Bowl is held in a different year from the one in which most of the regular season is played.
Bob Moore, historian for the Kansas City Chiefs, credits the idea of using Roman numerals to Lamar Hunt, the late Chiefs owner and one of the godfathers of the modern NFL. (History also credits Hunt with coming up with the name "Super Bowl" for the big game.)
"The Roman numerals made it much more important," Moore said.
When in Rome
With Super Bowl XLVI approaching, a primer on Roman numerals:V equals 5
X equals 10
L equals 50
C equals 100
D equals 500
M equals 1,000
Roman numerals are usually arranged in descending value and added up from left to right. But when a smaller number is placed before a larger one, the smaller value is subtracted from the larger one to the right.
For example: IV is 4, XL is 40 and CM equals 900. So MCMXLIV is 1944.
There are certain restrictions when subtracting. For example, 45 is written as XLV, not VL. And 49 is XLIX, not IL.
Source: Gerard Michon of www.numericana.com
