The Super Bowl was changed forever back in 1971 when Roman numerals were used to name the final game of the NFL season.

As we look forward to Sunday's 59th edition of the league's most popular event, it is worth reminding people who exactly came up with this change - and he is directly related to the Kansas City Chiefs, who will be taking on the Philadelphia Eagles this evening.

Lamar Hunt, the founder and former owner of the Chiefs, proposed using Roman numerals for the Super Bowl to avoid public confusion, given that an NFL season spans two calendar years. Before his idea, the first four Super Bowls were numbered conventionally: one, two, three and four.

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Although most of the current football season occurred in the last quarter of 2024, the playoffs and the Super Bowl take place in early 2025. By ensuring the Super Bowl was named independently from the calendar year, the NFL made sure that no one would mistake the league finale as part of the following regular season.

Despite this long-standing tradition, an exception was made in 2016 for the 50th anniversary of the Super Bowl. Instead of using 'Super Bowl L' as the title, the league chose to use 'Super Bowl 50' to commemorate the event and also for branding purposes.

As the Chiefs remain in the hunt for their third straight Super Bowl victory and what would be an unprecedented treble of victories, head coach Andy Reid has stated that his team isn't getting caught up in the historic implications.

Speaking to Rich Eisen, Reid said: "I haven’t heard one mention of it. I haven’t mentioned it. I don’t plan on mentioning it, but I’m also not naiive enough to know that they’ve heard it.

"I mean, I’ve heard it a ton up to this point and I’m sure I’ll hear it more this next week down in New Orleans. We all know that’s out there but what matters is how you take care of business.

"What’s going to help you is that you focus in and take care or business today while we're doing our practices or in the meetings we have today. Take care of that and everything else you let the chips fall where they may."