XLVI for Women

No matter what they say, men do not want women in sports. I suppose there could be one exception: women's basketball, and then only if they didn't wear bras. Otherwise, never mind the dirty looks from wives and daughters, female colleagues, or even the equal rights legal stuff that says they have to let us in. Men simply do not want women journalists in locker rooms, announcing sport events, or on the back of a horse in the Kentucky Derby.

Women know this. Women do not care. Women will do it all anyway.

But what about the Super Bowl? Have men at last created a devious way to defeat us, a method so diabolically clever that it is worthy of womanhood itself?

We may well have a favorite team and have already phoned our bookies, but what we cannot do is figure out which Super Bowl is being played. Take the game this Sunday between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. Where is it being played? In Indianapolis. And that's just the start. It's called "Super Bowl XLVI." What? Are we all supposed to look these things up every year?

On the front of Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, workers already installed a giant sign that just says XLVI. Why they aren't even called numbers, they're called numerals. What's that about anyway?

It has to be a man plot. Super Bowl use of Roman numerals only started in 1971, same year women in Switzerland were finally allowed to vote. I consider this a Revenge Move.

They can't call this Sunday's game Super Bowl 46? Are they so scared of us they have to play the game in a city neither team is from, use numerals instead of numbers, and finally, not even say it's the Super Bowl but just XLVI?

It's definitely a plot against women. The numbers might be Roman, but it's still Greek to me.