New York, NY – With Super Bowl XLVIII just days away, the country’s leading poll organization, The Gallup Poll, released a new survey that showed Americans can’t find Yemen on the world map.  But that was not the most revealing result of the new poll. Part Two of the poll showed that Americans — football fans in particular — can’t count in Roman numerals.

There was only one multiple-choice question on the second part of the survey: “Which of the following Arabic numerals correspond to the Roman numerals XLVIII ?”  The choices were 28, 38, 48, 58 , 68, and “none of the above.”

Thirty percent of respondents answered 28; twenty five percent answered 38; fifteen percent answered 68, and ten percent answered 58.  Only 5% answered 48 which was the correct answer. The remaining fifteen percent answered “none of the above” because they didn’t know that the numbers 0123456789 were called “Arabic”numerals.  They thought that Arabic numerals referred to the special characters used in Yemen and the rest of the Arab world.

Upon learning of the poll results, the National Football League board of governors met in an emergency session to unanimously approve a resolution to change next year’s official Super Bowl name to “Super Bowl 49.”