Why not a Super Bowl SATURDAY?

SoFi Stadium is seen Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Inglewood, Calif. SoFi Stadium is the location of Tremendous Bowl LVI scheduled to be performed on Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022.

Morry Gash, Related Press

What if Tremendous Bowl Sunday had been Tremendous Bowl Saturday, as a substitute?

A highschool pupil in Florida has proposed simply such a change and has drawn a stunning quantity of consideration for it. Frank Ruggeri, an 18-year-old from Palm Bay, Florida, has circulated a petition on-line to have the sport moved up a day. It feels like a radical concept — like transferring Christmas to the twenty fourth — however greater than 120,000 individuals have signed the petition (Roger Goodell is just not one in every of them).

While you learn the reasoning of Ruggeri, properly, it could be troublesome to argue towards it, though the NFL won't ever make the change. In spite of everything, we’re speaking a couple of league that continues to cling to the dumbest, most nonsensical time beyond regulation format ever conceived, to not point out an outdated exhibition season (going, going, gone?). The NFL is so nonsensical that, after years of claiming all the appropriate issues about participant security, the league added an additional sport to the schedule (cash trumping security and customary sense in fact).

Anyway, the place was I? Tremendous Bowl Saturday. Ruggeri’s argument is straightforward. The Tremendous Bowl is dear for this nation. Right here, let the child clarify it. “It’s actually, actually necessary to me as a result of 17.2 million individuals miss work,” he mentioned throughout a TV look on CBS (which tells you the way a lot consideration this has acquired). “That’s $44 billion much less productiveness.”

He’s slightly on the excessive facet for misplaced productiveness — most stories put the financial loss at $3-4 billion, not $44 billion (possibly somebody missed a decimal level). However you get the thought. Individuals keep up late partying and watching the sport and miss work on Monday. Greater than 17 million individuals name in sick the subsequent day (wouldn’t you want to listen to a few of their excuses). It’s a modern-day sickness known as “Tremendous Bowl Fever” and a modern-day phenomenon known as “Tremendous Bowl Monday.”

This yr’s Tremendous Bowl, which might be performed in Los Angeles, will start at 6:30 p.m. EST and finish at 10-10:30. By the point followers kick out the company and clear up the mess in the home or journey house it'll in all probability be near midnight. All of it makes for an extended afternoon and night of overeating and overdrinking.

(Aspect commentary: The sport wouldn’t be so lengthy in the event that they’d reduce that overblown, overrated, ridiculous Tremendous Bowl halftime present, which runs 20-Half-hour — twice the conventional size. What a mistake it was after they invited the Hollywood crowd an opportunity to resuscitate their careers. Now they’ve made the sport nearly secondary to the “present,” to not point out the commercials.)

Over time there have been proposals to declare Tremendous Bowl Monday a nationwide vacation or to maneuver the sport to an present vacation weekend, which reveals you the way whacko this nation is for soccer. This yr’s sport falls on Nationwide Pork Rind Day (severely), however no one will get a time without work. Possibly they may transfer Presidents Day up per week (it’s being held on Nationwide Sticky Bun Day later this month).

The Tremendous Bowl has been performed on Sunday since its inception in 1967 and the overwhelming majority of NFL video games are performed on Sunday. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell defends the league’s Tremendous Bowl date by saying that Sunday attracts an even bigger TV viewers than Saturday.

Ruggeri, who has really been pushing for Tremendous Bowl Saturday for 2 years, counters Goodell by saying a Saturday Tremendous Bowl, “will get more cash and get extra guests to the sport. (They) NFL will get extra tv views as a result of most authorities jobs have Sunday off. It can let extra kids take pleasure in their beloved sport on TV or on the venue. Many of the soccer playoff video games are on Saturday anyway.”

“The individuals might be watching,” Ruggeri continues, channeling James Earl Jones for a second. “… And I believe the financial affect can be simpler to have it on Sunday.”

There was a time when no video games had been performed on Sunday due to America’s sturdy, broad-based Christian beliefs. Sunday was believed to be a day of worship and relaxation — there’s this factor known as the Ten Commandments and the fourth merchandise required individuals to “hold the sabbath day holy.”

There have been really legal guidelines towards Sunday video games. Within the early twentieth century that started to alter when Main League Baseball pushed for Sunday play as a result of the homeowners believed they may make more cash that day. Legal guidelines had been slowly modified after a lot controversy and even courtroom battles. The New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds performed a sport on Sunday in 1917 and afterward each managers had been arrested.

Now skilled and collegiate video games are performed on Sunday and it has filtered all the way down to youth leagues, as properly. A relative few nonetheless cling to the previous sensibilities, some going so far as recording the sport and watching it on Monday,

The NFL may handle a part of the issue just by transferring the kickoff up three or 4 hours, however you'll be able to think about what Goodell would say to that: The NFL makes more cash later within the day.

Ruggeri’s trigger goes to be harder than stopping Cooper Kupp within the open area.