CHARLOTTE, N.C. – How will they be remembered?

That’s now the most significant question about these Carolina Panthers. What will their Super Bowl legacy be?

With only 37 Super Bowls having been played before this one – and with the 10 most-watched TV shows of all time being Super Bowls – not much is forgotten here.

If I say “Jackie Smith,” for instance, do you immediately respond “Hall of Fame tight end”? Or do you say, “Dropped a pass for Dallas in the end zone at the Super Bowl”?

Probably the latter. Same with Buffalo kicker Scott Norwood; he never will live down the missed field goal that cost the Bills their best shot at a Super Bowl. What if a Panther becomes this year’s biggest goat?

Not only will we in the Carolinas never forget it, but neither will millions of others.

On the other hand, the hero potential in Houston is huge.

Twenty years from now, someone might be mentioning Steve Smith in the same breath as Lynn Swann. Or Jake Delhomme and Joe Namath.

It’s not impossible. Super Bowl memories are instantaneously branded into the consciousness of hundreds of millions of people.

Super Bowls are a communal ritual in America. They are a party, a football game and a cultural phenomenon that crosses all racial and financial boundaries. Even the Super Bowl commercials get more national attention than the Panthers received for most of their entire seasons.

So some stuff is going to happen in Houston. It will happen either in the game, or before the game, or probably both.

I’ve covered a half-dozen Super Bowls. The dumbest question I ever heard on media day was this one, to Green Bay tight end Mark Chmura: “Does a tight end actually have to have a tight end?”

“No,” Chmura replied. “But it helps.”

There have been other great lines from the pre-Super Bowl buildup. My favorite came from Dallas linebacker Thomas Henderson, who once said of Pittsburgh quarterback Terry Bradshaw: “He couldn’t spell “cat’ if you spotted him the “c’ and the “a.”‘

But mostly, what people remember are the games.

Too many of them have been forgettable – including Tampa Bay’s 48-21 sandblasting of Oakland last season – but I don’t think this one will be.

I think we’re in store for one like the “1 yard short” Super Bowl in Atlanta in 2000 (St. Louis 23, Tennessee 16), or the “Legend of Tom Brady” Super Bowl in New Orleans in 2002 (New England 20, St. Louis 17).

The underdog has won close to a third of the time in the previous Super Bowls, so that should give the Panthers some hope. Panthers coach John Fox tells his team at least once a week, “We will define ourselves. No one else is going to do that for us.”

Here, now, is the time to write the biggest definition of all. The Panthers’ Super Bowl week has officially started.

By the time it ends, we will all have a memory seared into our souls.