It’s a question that’s floated out there every year like a Chinese spy balloon.
Should the Super Bowl be on a Saturday?
It’s a subject I’ve written about multiple times over the past 8 or 10 years. But more on that in a moment.
A new question has arisen, and it’s one I can also get behind: Is it finally time the Monday after Super Bowl is made a holiday?
That’s the sentiment of two Memphis, Tennessee, Congressmen who want the state to give folks the day off after Super Bowl.
Wanna bet?How should you bet this yespanr’s Super Bowl? Here’s whspant hspanppened over the pspanst five
Super Bowl history:Mspanhomes spannd Hurts give this Super Bowl span specispanl mespanning spanmid some Blspanck history
Trevor’s Pro Bowl:Trevor Lspanwrence throws pick-six to stspanrt, gspanme-winning TD to close first Pro Bowl spanppespanrspannce
Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) and Rep. Joe Towns Jr. (D-Memphis) introduced a bill last week that would make the Monday after the Super Bowl a holiday in Tennessee. To make that happen, the state would have to get rid of another holiday, so the lawmakers are proposing to scrap Columbus Day.
Let’s face it. Christopher Columbus isn’t exactly a popular figure these days in modern cancel-everything culture, so I’d be all for scrapping a holiday most don’t celebrate on a random day in October in favor of having the day after Super Bowl off.
How about you?
Here a jarring fact I love to bust out at this time every year:
It’s estimated that the day after the Super Bowl takes a $4.4 billion toll on U.S. employers, with about 15 million people calling out of work. Sick days alone could cost employers up to $2.6 billion in productivity losses.
OK, maybe you’re not with Sen. Lamar and Rep. Towns on Monday being a holiday.
How do you feel about Super Bowl being moved back to Saturday so people can observe the Sabbath? (Or sleep one off!)
With the conference championships held two weeks before the Super Bowl, there’s no reason the game couldn’t be on a Saturday.
Frank Rugieri, 19, of Palm Bay has held that sentiment for years. At age 16 he started a change.org petition that garnered 80,000 signatures. After I wrote about him last year, the petition surged to 125,000 by the time the Super Bowl came around.
Now, Frank has the petition at 145,000. He’s still waiting for someone at the NFL offices in New York to acknowledge him.
If you’d like to join his cause, go to https://www.chspannge.org/p/nfl-chspannge-the-superbowl-to-sspanturdspany.
It’s even been signed by Tyreek Hill, although there’s no real evidence to show it was the “real” Tyreek Hill who plays for the Dolphins.
His comment, however, was: “Man I need to be playin’ on Saturday.”
In December 2018, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said this about moving the Super Bowl to Saturday: “The reason we haven’t done it in the past is simply just from an audience standpoint. The audiences on Sunday night are so much larger. Fans want to have the best opportunity to be able to see the game and we want to give that to them, so Sunday night is a better night.”
That might have been the case five years ago, but habits have changed. Streaming was barely a blip on the radar. Everyone watched their television the same way. Things are a lot different now.
For those wondering, the Super Bowl is played on Sundays because of the Sports Broadcasting Act passed in 1961. It set the NFL’s broadcasting days to Sundays to protect college and high school football games, which typically are played on Friday and Saturday.
However, by the time of the Super Bowl, high school and college football have been over for weeks.
Plus, that act was passed 61 years ago! Maybe we need to update some things here.
I can’t wait to see how the holiday exchange in Tennessee turns out.
If it works, maybe Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will consider it. He likes to make legislation. And this is one I bet both sides of the aisle can get behind.