Super Bowl to take a one year hiatus using letters, does away with "L."

The Phoenicians called it lamedh. The Greeks call it lambda. The Latins--and the alphabet we use today--just call it L.

The National Football League? They're calling it quits, at least for one year when counting Super Bowls with Roman numerals (or, rather, letters), all because the Roman numeral for 50, when standing alone, doesn't look terribly appealing, so say the NFL's creative minds.

Jaime Weston, the NFL's vice president of brand and creative, told ESPN the thought process behind ditching the nearly half-century tradition of using letters. “When we developed the Super Bowl XL logo, that was the first time we looked at the letter L. Up until that point, we had only worked with X’s, V’s and I’s. And, at that moment, that’s when we started to wonder: What will happen when we get to 50?”

What will happen is a golden-hued numeric 50 that looks like it was stolen from the set of The Price Is Right.

"We think what we have makes a very powerful statement for the NFL brand," Weston told ESPN.

Powerfully generic and geriatric, yes.