We perused 65 years of literature unsuccessfully searching for a theoretical analysis of phosphorescence lifetime in aromatic carbonyls. The only discussion we found is in the 1974 paper by Cheng and Hirota , in which all elements are laid out to address the problem. However, they did not explicitly address the difference in phosphorescence lifetimes, instead focusing on the vibronic couplings and zero-field splittings. Thus, we decided to fill this knowledge gap by surveying how molecular symmetry impacts phosphorescence from 3 n* and 3 * in these molecules.