Style on the Sidelines: Playoff Edition 🏈

My team is no longer in the playoffs (if you missed hearing about the Steelers’ ignominious loss to the Browns, consider yourself fortunate), but I’m still willing to talk football and style!
 
Here are some style pointers to help you through the rest of the playoffs. 
 
Use roman numerals for the Super Bowl number 
While I mostly agree with The AP Stylebook’s style guidance for football, there’s one exception. They say to “refer to the Super Bowl by the year of the game, not by Roman numeral.” So, according to AP, you should refer to this season’s Super Bowl—to be played February 7, 2021—as the “2021 Super Bowl.” If you have to use a number, AP says to use cardinal numbers, so “Super Bowl 55.”
 
I don’t understand this guidance since the NFL itself uses roman numerals* to refer to Super Bowl numbers, with the exception of Super Bowl 50. They decided not to refer to it as “Super Bowl L,” and it was the first Super Bowl in more than forty years not to have roman numerals in its name. I think the idea was that “Super Bowl L” looked more like a clothing size. The NFL went right back to roman numerals for the following year, Super Bowl LI. 
 
* I am lowercasing “roman” in “roman numeral,” following the guidance of The Chicago Manual of Style and contra The AP Stylebook. The word “roman” in the sense of I, II, III, IV, etc. is so far removed from its proper-noun origin that capitalization is unnecessary. It’s being used as a generic adjective. 
 
So use roman numerals for references to past, present, and future Super Bowls, starting with Super Bowl V in 1971, the first time a roman numeral was used in the name of a Super Bowl, and excepting only Super Bowl 50. 
 
Notice that both words in “Super Bowl” are capitalized. That’s not the case for the earlier playoff rounds. I do agree with AP here. 
 
Lowercase the names of the playoff rounds—excepting proper nouns—until the Super Bowl
 
As The AP Stylebook explains: 
 
The first round of the playoffs—played last weekend—should be referred to as “the wild-card round.”
 
The second round of the playoffs—to be played this weekend—should be referred to as “the divisional round.”  
 
The third round of the playoffs, to be played the following weekend, has two games: “the NFC championship game” and “the AFC championship game.” (In case you’re not into football, “NFC” stands for “National Football Conference,” which comprises half of the teams in the NFL, and “AFC” stands for “American Football Conference,” which comprises the other half. “NFC” and “AFC” are therefore abbreviations for proper nouns.) 
 
Two weeks after the championship games is the Super Bowl. 
 
Don’t forget to turn on a football game (or four) this weekend, and go Bills (my favorite team left)! 
 
Beating through the thicket of English, while taking a break to watch the divisional round, 
 
Rebekah Slonim