I love the Super Bowl. Super Bowl Sunday is second only to Christmas as a time when family and friends gather to eat drink and enjoy the day. It is an undeclared major holiday. Even non-football fans enjoy the day. This is a time when everyone gathers around the TV and spends the next 4 to 5 hours either watching the game or waiting to watch the commercials. The Super Bowl transcends sports. Non-football fans take pleasure in the atmosphere and ambiance that the game projects and die hard football fans get their final football fix of the season. It doesn’t matter if your home team is playing or not, the game is much bigger than the teams playing, it is a sports ritual that is second to none.
The only drawback to Super Bowl Sunday is that the next day is Monday. Time and time again I have found that attendance at work is lacking following the Super Bowl. Maybe it’s too much alcohol, greasy food or late night celebrations but the day after the Super Bowl is not extremely productive especially with the younger work force.
My question which should be directed to the NFL is why not play the Super Bowl on Saturday evenings? This would allow for people to travel further to be with family and friends for the day, it would allow those who enjoy celebrating the game to have a day recuperate and it would help businesses on Monday stay fully staffed and productive. Those lucky few who have tickets and travel to the game could spend another night in the host city and not have to rush to catch a plane immediately after the game. I can see few reasons to keep the Super Bowl on Sunday’s except tradition. Now it may be argued that a lot more people work on Saturdays than Sundays so it would reduce the viewership but
I doubt that Saturday evenings would have that much of an impact. During the Super Bowl, only a handful of people are shopping at retail stores or buying groceries. These businesses could reduce staff or shut down early since customers would have the next day to visit these stores.
To summarize, Super Bowl Saturday makes a lot of sense and should be considered an unofficial holiday. It gives everyone a day to recover from the biggest party day of the year and businesses on Mondays would not see such a drop off in attendance as they presently experience.
Here is a trivia question you can use on your friends. The phone companies keep records of the volume of calls made each day. Other than Mother’s Day, what is the next busiest day for people making phone calls? You guessed it, Super Bowl Sunday!
Right on!