Roman numerals. Are they numbers or are they letters?

Would we know — or would we even… Roman numerals. Are they numbers or are they letters?

Would we know — or would we even care — without the Super Bowl?

Where else do you see Roman numerals used other than the Super Bowl? All right, sometimes they’re used to represent years, they might be on a clock, and pages in the introduction of a book are numbered with them.

But it’s kind of confusing just trying to figure them out, and even more so if you try to include them in a sentence. Here, I’ll show you.

Sunday’s matchup between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers was the XXXVIIIth Super Bowl played, if you use those letters the Romans called numbers. If you go way back and include the championship games played before the Super Bowl, there have been LXXI — or 71, for those of you who aren’t sure how Caesar counted his conspirators — title games played in NFL history.

But that was well before my time, and I’m going to guess that it was before your time, too, so let’s stick to what we know.

The Super Bowl has at times been a stage for some of the greatest players of the game to perform. Sometimes those players step up, and sometimes those players fall on their faces.

Probably, no one knows that better than John Elway, who led the Denver Broncos to V Super Bowls, but was only able to win II of them.

In his first III title games, Elway’s Broncos lost by a combined score of CXXXVI-XX, or 136-20. Not very good for a guy who was elected to the Hall of Fame last weekend.

But in the other II games, the Broncos came out victorious, and Elway was named the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XXXIII.

Not too many players get more than I shot at redemption, however.

Until recently, Fran Tarkenton held every significant career regular season passing record in history and he led the Minnesota Vikings to III Super Bowls as their quarterback.

But the Vikings lost all of them, and Tarkenton, who threw VI interceptions in those III games, never had the chance to play in another Super Bowl.

The same goes for Dan Marino, who broke all of Tarkenton’s passing records.

In his rookie season, Marino led the Miami Dolphins to Super Bowl XIX, but lost to the XLIXers, XXXVIII-XVI — 38-16 by the 49ers, if you haven’t caught on to the letters that are numbers thing.

Marino played another XV seasons in the NFL and never played in another Super Bowl. In fact, for all the success that he had in the regular season, Marino’s Dolphins only made it back to the conference championship game II more times.

Other greats lived for the big games. Take the quarterback on the other side of Marino’s only Super Bowl appearance for example.

Joe Montana played in IV Super Bowls for San Francisco in his career, winning all of them. Montana was named MVP a record III times and also holds the all-time Super Bowl records for passer rating, completed passes and yards gained.

By the way, I would have converted those records into Roman numerals, but it seems that the Romans didn’t know what decimals were, or at least they had no way of representing them. Therefore, it is impossible to convert a passer rating into Roman numerals.

There was Joe Namath’s prediction in Super Bowl III, Lynn Swann’s acrobatic catches in Super Bowl X and Marcus Allen’s LXXIV-yard — or 74-yard — touchdown run in Super Bowl XVII. All III are lasting images from the biggest game of the year, and all III players were named the MVP of their respective games.

The Super Bowl can also introduce the world to guys that no one has ever really heard of.

Washington rookie running back Timmy Smith rushed for CCIV yards — also known as a record 204 yards — in Super Bowl XXII to help the Redskins to the win.

Dallas cornerback Larry Brown intercepted II passes in Super Bowl XXX to help boost his name in the free agent market the following year, as did Tampa Bay safety Dexter Jackson after he picked off II passes in the XXXVIIth Super Bowl last season,

The Super Bowl also brought Desmond Howard back from the scrap heap. Howard, who had flopped as a pro after winning the Heisman Trophy, tied a Super Bowl record with CCXXIV return yards in Green Bay’s victory in Super Bowl XXXI.

I thought about converting that last stat for you, but if I do it, you’re never going to learn. And since you probably don’t know what those letters stand for, you’ll never know how many return yards Howard had.

And if it weren’t for the Super Bowl, Roman numerals would just be … annoying letters that are used to represent numbers.

Joe Marchilena is the sports editor for The Pitt News, and he can count to LXXXVIII in Roman numerals.