A teenager would like to have the Super Bowl moved to Saturdays, arguing that having the game on Sunday is an inconvenience to fans who have to go to work or school the day after, CNN reports. The teen started an online petition, and it’s gained thousands of signatures.
The Super Bowl has transcended its status of being just a championship sports game. It’s now an event that brings huge parties with food, libations, and general camaraderie. Advertisers famously bring out their best ads of the year when the widest TV audience has their eyes glued to the set. And the fun lasts well into the night, particularly on the East Coast.
And it takes place on a Sunday night.
Frankie Ruggeri, 16, says that doesn’t make sense. Why have a giant party on a night when a significant number of the participants have to get up early the next day for work or school? Why not just move it to Saturday, when the stakes are lower?
He’s started an online petition to convince the National Football League (NFL) to move the Super Bowl, beginning with next year’s Super Bowl LV, to Saturday.
His idea actually has some merit. A 2019 survey found that 17 million Americans miss work on the Monday after the Super Bowl. What’s more, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that traffic accidents increase 41 percent following the big game.
Unfortunately for Frankie, his petition is probably dead on arrival and likely for a lot of reasons.
For one, online petitions aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. There’s no governmental agency that’s tasked with reviewing or enacting them, and the best anyone can hope for with an online petition is that the parties involved will notice it and act out of the goodness of their hearts.
The NFL, for its part, is almost certainly not going to move the Super Bowl to Saturday. After all, millions of dollars have been spent turning “ Super Bowl Sunday” into a brand. And of course, there’s tradition. Save for the odd Saturday game and a handful of weekday games during the season, the NFL does the lion’s share of its business on Sundays.
Why is that? In 1961, Congress passed a law intended to protect the pro game from infringing on the college game, forbidding professional football from being broadcast on Friday or Saturday during high school and college football seasons.
These days, of course, the college and high school seasons are long since done by the time Super Bowl Sunday rolls around. But the likelihood that the NFL is going to buck both its brand and tradition and move the big game to Saturdays seems extremely unlikely.
