PHOENIX

Chris Matthews, a former one-year CFL wonder and backup receiver and special-teams player on the Seattle Seahawks, will take his Super Bowl ring any way he can get one.

"Once I get that ring, I don't care if I made a million plays or I didn't make one play -- I've got a ring," Matthews said in an interview Tuesday at Super Bowl XLIX Media Day.

"I'm going to FEEL like I'm a superstar."

For one season in the CFL, he pretty much was one.

Matthews didn't latch on with an NFL team after not getting drafted in 2011. The Cleveland Browns signed him as a free agent but cut him before the end of training camp.

He ventured north and signed a two-year deal with the CFL's Winnipeg Blue Bombers and was magnificent right out of the box: 1,192 receiving yards and seven touchdowns, which earned him the CFL's Most Outstanding Rookie Award.

In 2013, though, he played in just four games while battling a painful turf-toe injury.

Last February he signed with the Seahawks. He was on Seattle's practice squad late at mid-season, and was active for only three of the Seahawks' final four games.

But Matthews made one of the critical plays in Seattle's unlikely comeback win against Green Bay to win the NFC championship. He recovered Steven Hauschka's onside kick that prevented the Packers from running out most of the remaining clock, with 2:09 left.

Reflecting on his own unlikely journey, Matthews said, "My first year in the CFL I did good. The second year, I was planning on demolishing -- well, I don't wish anything bad against anybody, but I wanted to absolutely demolish that second year."

Matthews said he enjoyed his time so much in Winnipeg that even if he could have get out of his CFL contract after one season to jump back to the NFL, he wouldn't have.

"They gave me that opportunity to play and I feel blessed I had it," Matthews said.

Originator of Super Bowl Roman numerology hopes it returns with 'Super Bowl LI'

This year it's called Super Bowl XLIX -- that's Roman numerals for 49. As in the 49th Super Bowl.

Next year the NFL is calling it Super Bowl 50, rather than Super Bowl L.

Will the NFL resume using Roman numerals the following year? Indeed, will it be Super Bowl LI or Super Bowl 51?

Jerry Green of the Detroit News is the journalist whose idea it was to name Super Bowls with Roman numerals, rather than just regular numbers. He hopes the league goes back to Roman numerals.

Green is mostly retired. He writes one column a week for the Detroit News and is attending his 49th Super Bowl this week. Right: he's been to every one, one of only two remaining members of the press who can say as much.

(Personal disclosure: While growing up across the international river from Detroit in Windsor, Ont., Green was one of my sports-writing idols.)

"I claim to be the originator of the Roman numerals," Green told me Tuesday at Super Bowl XLIX Media Day.

The idea came to him before the third Super Bowl in Miami, following the 1968 season. It pitted the AFL champion New York Jets against the heavily favoured NFL champion, Don Shula's Baltimore Colts.

"Broadway Joe" Namath's Jets famously won, after his guarantee.

"The Detroit News had a strike," Green said. "I went on my own to that Super Bowl and got a job writing for one of these pro football magazines.

"The editor asked me to compare the first two Super Bowls, so I used 'Super Bowl I' and 'Super Bowl II' to do it. As far as I know they first started numbering them with Roman numerals starting with Super Bowl IV, and they've used Roman numerals ever since.

"I can prove that, because I have those magazines somewhere in my garage."

Asked if he's planning on attending the half-century game next year, Green quipped, "I just hope I can make it through 49 right now, then I'll look at 50."

Wilson is going to make a lot more than $750Gs per year

Russell Wilson is damn good. And, to this point in his spectacular young career, damn cheap.

As a third-round draft pick in 2012, Wilson earns a $749,176 salary under terms of his four-year, nearly $3-million rookie contract.

This off-season, Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks can negotiate an extension.

He's due for a massive raise. A second Super Bowl appearance in three years already has likely earned Wilson a new deal upwards of $20 million per year.

Seahawks GM John Schneider on Tuesday at Super Bowl XLIX Media Day said those talks have yet to begin. But he knows what it means, and that means belt-tightening elsewhere.

"It presents challenges, there's no question," Schneider told a handful of reporters off to the side. "We haven't sat down with his representatives yet.

"We're still going to be drafting young players and playing young players, so we might not be able to dip into free agency as much as you want to, here and there, or compensate somebody else that's already on your team, as much as you want to.

"But just the fact that we're going to continue to keep drafting players and playing young people should help us compensate for whatever that level of compensation is (for Wilson)."

So, if you're a veteran Seahawk looking for a massive raise -- such as perhaps, ohhh, Marshawn Lynch -- you've got to know that the club is going to take care of Wilson first.

And foremost.