Every year, NFL fans proclaim that the Monday following the Super Bowl should be a national holiday. One fan is actually putting in the effort to make this a reality, albeit in a different way. A 16-year-old has created a petition to move the Super Bowl to a Saturday.
According to CNN, a New York teen named Frankie Ruggeri wants to make the change due to football fans having to stay up late on Sunday to watch the game. He believes that this late night makes it difficult to prepare for school the following day.
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“Why not have a kid say, ‘How about the Super Bowl be on a Saturday?’” Ruggeri told CNN. He said that the idea for his petition came about during the playoffs. He proceeded to create the petition on Change.org with the ultimate goal of having Super Bowl LV on a Saturday.
Ruggeri created an initial goal of 50,000 signatures. As of Saturday afternoon, the petition has 44,977. As the teen explained, moving the Super Bowl to an earlier day would provide the NFL with more viewers, as well as the potential for more tourists heading to the big game.
According to The Workforce Institute, a 2019 survey found that more than 17 million U.S. employees may miss work the day after the Super Bowl. Heading to the office after a big game and all of the treats that are ingested while watching the game is not the easiest for some. There are even some football fans that use a vacation day to avoid going to work after the Super Bowl.
One reason for the Super Bowl being played on a Sunday is that NFL games have been relegated to this day by the Sports Broadcasting Act. Congress passed this act in 1961, which barred the broadcasting of professional football games on Fridays and Saturdays during the college and high school seasons.
The NFL has shown a tendency to broadcast certain games on Saturdays, most notably during the holiday season. There is a break between the college season and the College Football Playoffs, and the NFL fills that gap with two or three Saturday games in late December.
Ruggeri does not know if his petition will ultimately make a difference in future Super Bowls, but he is blown away by the response. He told CNN that “It’s like if the Rams won the Super Bowl pretty much.”
(Photo Credit: Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
