Superbowl

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:16 PM -0800 1/27/03, Dave Wilton wrote:
>A question came up about the origin of the term "Superbowl" on my site's
>discussion board. A common tale is that it was coined by a KC Chiefs owner
>Lamar Hunt in 1970 after seeing his daughter playing with a "superball."
>This has all the marks of an apocryphal story, but evidently the name
>"superbowl" was not used officially by the NFL until 1970 or so.
>
>I know the OED has a cite from 1966 (a reference to the upcoming game in Jan
>67), but is this an isolated use or was the term in general use by
>sportswriters and others before the NFL adopted it? Super + bowl is such an
>obvious coinage that I wouldn't be surprised if there were independent
>coinages.

Just located my copy of _The New York Times at the Super Bowl_ (1974,
Leonard Koppett, ed.), and the very first columns reproduced, Jan. 8,
1967 (the week before Super Bowl I), by Frank Litsky and William N.
Wallace, contain several references to "the Super Bowl" or "the Super
Bowl game".  But what of the Roman numerals?  No references to the
first one as "Super Bowl I", but then Charles I wasn't so called
until II came along, right?  But actually II wasn't so-called either,
or III.  The upcoming or just completed games, in the several columns
reproduced in the book, are just called "the Super Bowl (game,
contest)", as in the corresponding college bowl games ("the Rose Bowl
(game)", etc., not "Rose Bowl XCVII" or whatever).  Indeed, the first
reference I can find in the reproduced columns to Super Bowl N for a
roman numeral N is Super Bowl VI (1/15/72), in columns by Red Smith
and Arthur M. Daley.  But it's clear they didn't originate the
practice.  One of Daley's columns after the game (1/17/72) refers to
"the production billed in fancy Roman numerals as Super Bowl VI."
And as the commercial says, it was the Super Bowl that "turned Roman
numerals into Roman numerals".

Larry