Floating the idea of national football holiday

Should Super Bowl Sunday be a national holiday?

Lots of folks have long thought it might be a good idea.

Some think it might be better if we did the game on Saturday.

At the risk of being two-faced after ranting about our soft nation, I guess I might be OK with doing a national holiday out of a football game. At least we would all be celebrating together to a much larger degree than many of our holidays. It’s sad that most of our holidays are just a day off for many.

I guess a holiday for a football game would be par with our attention span.

Actually, what folks want is to have the Monday after the Super Bowl off. Lots of employers are just about there with that sort of thinking. They’ve watched as absenteeism has grown every year. It is estimated that 17 million people get the Super Bowl flu every year. That works out to $4 billion in lost productivity.

Actually, businesses would probably just like to see the Super Bowl played on Saturday. Unfortunately we’ve heard from NFL officials over and over that’s not likely to happen. When your event played on Sunday evening is the most viewed television show every year, you don’t mess with perfection.

From a business standpoint I can understand both sides of the Saturday argument. The greedy NFL organization would probably stand to lose more than the collective thousands of small businesses that don’t get anything done on Super Flu Monday. So we should probably lean toward the NFL, right?

Another possible option would be to take one of those national holidays we consider just a day off and rolling it together with the Super Bowl.

Since nobody gets Groundhog Day off, I am of course talking about Presidents’ Day, better known across the West as Ski Holiday. The NFL already took a baby step in that direction this year by expanding to 17 games. I could stand to see teams play 18 games myself, but I don’t think the Players’ Union is going for it. So I would propose that we put another bye week in the season to get it to Presidents’ Day weekend.

Or the federal government could just fold and move Presidents’ Day up a week. After all, George Washington’s birthday is Feb. 22 anyway. Not the Feb. 21 date the nation will observe this year.

The name for this new holiday will become Super Presidents’ Day Bowl.

Yes, this idea of linking Presidents’ Day and Super Bowl Sunday is almost a perfect idea. I actually only see two problems.

Those skiers could be a little upset when we make them choose between enjoying the game with friends and taking that ski weekend. The biggest thing wrong with it is that Presidents’ Day is one of the few holidays I don’t get off.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]