Wait, before we get started here, let me say it one more time: “Super Bowl!”

Sounds like I’m really excited about last week’s big game, doesn’t it? Or maybe you’re thinking, since this is an ad agency blog, that my enthusiasm is related to the big, expensive TV spots that aired during the broadcast (which, by most accounts, enthused no one).

Actually, my Tourette’s-like repetition has nothing to do with either. Instead, I’m engaged in an act of minor defiance.

The NFL, you see, as a money-making enterprise (a big money-making enterprise), has a trademark on the term “Super Bowl,” and if you want to use it in any marketing or promotional context, you must have a license. Which is not especially surprising. But did you know “Super Sunday” is forbidden, too? And the only reason we can safely say “big game” (which the NFL attempted to trademark in 2006—no, really) is because Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley responded with litigation.

And it’s not just advertisers who have to be careful. The NFL would prefer that editorial organizations avoid the trademarked terms, too, in anything but the strictest possible news sense. Now, I’m not going to characterize the NFL brass as a bunch of money-grubbers who care nothing for the sport and whose only love is for the lucre (there are plenty of others expressing that sentiment), but if you want to write something about the “big game” for public consumption (like, for instance, a blog entry), you might want to call in your legal team to get the green light. Or, like me, you could just say, “Super Bowl, Super Bowl, Super Bowl.”

(Photo courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/misterdna/ / CC BY 2.0)