All That Glitters...

Well, at least you can't accuse the NFL of underselling itself.

For those of us who've been wondering how the league would celebrate the 50th Super Bowl next February, today we learned the answer is two-fold:

1. all season long; and
2. with gold. Lots and lots of gold.

First off, we have the Super Bowl logo itself. We've known since last June that the NFL will be temporarily departing from recent practice of silver logos (not to mention its half-century history of Roman numerals) to bring us this subtle logo:

What we're learning today is that the logo was only the beginning of a new Gold Rush.

The NFL will be using a black-and-gold version of its shield logo throughout 2015.

Not just a gold shield, but also all 3D-ified, with gradients and everything.

That's not all; the various event logos used by the NFL, including Thanksgiving, Kickoff, Draft and playoff logos will also be decked out in the new color scheme.

The Pro Bowl uniforms will be black, white and gold.

(Okay, that one's actually an improvement.)

If that wasn't enough for you, the draftees will be walking down a "gold carpet" at the Draft next month.

Starting in Week 7, all teams will be wearing sideline gear with logos trimmed in gold. Here's the Patriots' version:

Yeah, that's going to look good with the Packers' logo. Best we can hope for is that they replace the standard athletic gold outline with this metallic gold one, rather than doubling them up. And what's the significance of starting this in Week 7?

For the game itself, the NFL has decided that the plain boring old Lombardi Trophy just isn't enough to mark this momentous occasion. The winner of the game will get an additional trophy, this understated and subtle thing:

According to the league, the "5" and "0" are bronzed and plated in 18-carat gold. They each weigh 33 pounds.

And finally, the 50-yard numbers will be painted gold at every stadium for every game this year. Just in case you can forget for a moment.

I haven't seen this much gold since James Bond had to save Fort Knox from Pussy Galore.

The fetishization of the Super Bowl era continues apace.

I often wish they put as much effort into remembering the real Golden Age of the NFL, but that would be admitting the existence of a time before we counted our championships by Roman numerals. Still, a boy can dream.