Editor’s notebook: Two bits on XLIX and 50

There’s just so much focus this year, not on Sunday’s Arizona contest, but on the oblong pigskin prize that burly men carry and pass, and sometimes kick, up and down a rectangular lawn that sometimes gets muddy.

Super Bowl, year 49, is upon us. (How disappointed must the San Francisco team have been to miss the playoffs this year, for the marketing department must have relished the prospect of “49ers in 49,” though admittedly “49ers in XLIX” would not have the same ring to it.)

Talk about muddy, this whole run up to Super Bowl (fill-in-the Roman Numerals). If Super Bowl Fifty is played on artificial turf in Santa Clara they should import some natural stuff just for the joy of the landmark edition of America’s Biggest Game getting all down and dirty — on the field, instead of off.

We know that in 2016 the NFL will dispense with the Roman numeral fussiness and the confusing “L” in favor of that good-old-meat-and-potatoes number “50.”

I think they should just brand it Superbowlfifty, kind of like we run it all together and say Joemontana. (And meanwhile pay that guy a stipend to save him from those humiliating pizza commercials.)

While they’re at this sea-change move, the dispensing of Roman digits, how about some other changes to the game:

Why call it football at all? Feet are rarely involved. Punts happen, but they’re afterthoughts, really. Call them “ovalteams” and think of the product tie-ins.

And can anyone explain to me why the refs throw a flag and stop the action for two minutes — for delay of game? Makes no sense; just toss the yellow rag and sort it out after the play is over, like any other penalty.

Anyway, I might not even watch 49, even with our backyard friends the Seahawks involved. It all seems kind of pointless; game, what game?

Meanwhile I’m sure everyone at the NFL is already looking forward to Superbowlfifty; get 49 behind us and the whole rhubarb over who mighta-flattened-the-balls and when.

Enough of that, and all year the arguments and the off-field issues; how disturbingly fitting that the 2014-15 year ends with yet another slimy veneer, aka “Deflate-gate.” But a lot can happen between now and Superbowlfifty – maybe a controversy over the precise length of the chain, or whether the uniforms were manufactured in some east Asian sweat factory.

And the “Hate-riots” may win this year, and they could be back for Superbowlfifty. Will that mean in a year are we still going to be asking how Bill Belicheck became Public Enemy Number I?

— Kirby Neumann-Rea