Should the idea of a Super Bowl played on Saturday gain steam?

PHOENIX — Last week a couple of lawmakers in Tennessee proposed a bill to make the Monday after the Super Bowl a state holiday.

The theory is that the Super Bowl is already an unofficial American holiday. Since people like to spend holidays with family and friends (sometimes requiring travel), why not make it a long weekend like Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July? And specifically to the Super Bowl, many watch the game at a party and tend to overindulge.

So why not have the state of Tennessee acknowledge the above with a travel/recovery day?

“With more than 16 million Americans expected to skip work the day after the Super Bowl, and about 8 million expected to ask for the day off in advance, we’re talking about a major hit to the workforce,” Rep. Joe Towns Jr. of Memphis said in a statement to Yahoo Sports.

“My bill simply wants to examine giving the rest of us the day off,” Towns said. “Let’s face it, it doesn’t get much more American than the Super Bowl and it’s becoming more and more the norm to miss work the next day.”

Who knows if this will pass. And even if it does, who knows if most private employers will even honor it, which would limit the impact. A post-Super Bowl day off has been periodically given in local markets — last year, a number of Cincinnati area public schools gave kids the day off after the Bengals played in the game.

Tennessee is but just one state, of course, and the Super Bowl is a national phenomenon, regardless of who is playing. It’s estimated more than 100 million Americans will watch Fox’s broadcast on Sunday. To cover everyone, we’d likely need federal legislation.

The easier thing to do is for the NFL to move the Super Bowl from its traditional Sunday 6:30 p.m. ET kickoff to a similar time on Saturday, allowing for fans to travel/recoup on a day they already have off. There’s a change.org petition asking for just that with nearly 150,000 signatures.

The Super Bowl has always been played on Sunday. The day made sense back in 1966 because all NFL games were played on Sundays. By 1970, however, Monday Night Football premiered and now regular season games are played on Thursdays and Saturdays as well. Playoff games this year were staged on Saturdays, Sundays and even one on a Monday.

So does the league still have to stick with Sunday?

"That [idea] has been around for a long time, people have talked about that," Roger Goodell said back in 2018 on the Kyle Brandt podcast. “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."

Is that really true? The NFL does get better ratings for games played on Sunday night than Saturday night, which makes sense since people have other entertainment plans on Saturdays. However, if the Super Bowl is played on a Saturday Night, wouldn’t that supersede pretty much everything else? Isn’t the Super Bowl capable of overcoming the day of the week? Could more people even wind up watching?

“Look, you can play the Super Bowl at 3 o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday and 80 million people will watch,” said Mike Mulvihill, Executive Vice President and Head of Strategy and Analytics for Fox Sports, which is broadcasting the game this year.

That doesn’t mean Mulvihill is in favor of it. Like others, he enjoys the history and tradition of the day.

“The Super Bowl is more than a sporting event, it’s an American holiday,” Mulvihill said. “You don’t move Independence Day off July 4th, you don’t move Christmas off 12/25. I don’t think you move the Super Bowl off Sunday. It’s what we’ve had our whole lives, everybody is comfortable with it.”

Mulvihill isn’t alone in that thinking. “I think it’s crazy,” Fox Sports’ CEO Eric Shanks said. “The Super Bowl just should be on Sunday.”

There is no known movement by the NFL to consider playing the game on Saturday instead of Sunday.

And considering what a phenomenon it already is, why mess with success? Taking the Saturday of build-up and parties away would likely cost the host city revenue. And while you can sympathize with the plight of those who can’t answer the bell on Monday because they ate too many chicken wings or drank too much beer, do they really deserve a federal law or the abandonment of nearly six decades of tradition?

Then again, the idea of a Saturday Night Super Bowl carries some exciting possibilities. Kickoff could get pushed back an hour or so, if the league wanted. The parties can go later. The ability to travel to spend time with family and friends could be opened up. New traditions can be created.

The NFL is the biggest entertainment property in the country. In 2022, it delivered 47 of the 50 top-rated television programs of the year. Toss in the halftime show and the gambling and the commercials and this is modern America in a four-hour package.

Maybe that deserves to have a holiday attached. Or maybe rather than counting on the political process, the NFL — which will break any tradition in pursuit of a few more bucks — might reevaluate the entire thing.

Super Sunday was the perfect choice back in 1966. By 2023, maybe not.

Maybe Saturday is worth a shot.