Day after the Super Bowl

Super Bowl Sunday is one of my favorite days of the year.  While it certainly helps that my beloved Patriots are back in the big game this year, it should go without saying that I would be watching anyway.  For many Americans, it's the same way.  You don't have to be a sports fanatic to be swept up in the excitement of this game.  Even if you're not much of a sports fan at all, you'll likely find yourself using the event as a reason to get together with friends for a party.  Maybe you're one of those people that just likes to watch for the commercials.  In any case, there's a pretty good chance that you'll be watching the game this Sunday (if not, I have to question what you're doing reading a sports blog).

Which leads us to one of my least favorite days of the year - the day after the Super Bowl.  That Monday morning where you wake up from a beer and nacho induced coma and realize you have to go to work.  There's a reason why the day after the Super Bowl is when the highest percentage of Americans call out of work.  Sadly, by writing this article, it essentially means I have no chance of calling out that day.  The boss isn't going to buy any excuse of being sick no matter how many fake sniffles or coughs I can utter through the phone.  So on Monday morning I'll be forced to drag myself out of bed and off to work.

Super Bowl hangover is a term typically reserved for the teams actually participating in the game, but it's something we'll all be suffering from on Monday.  Why does it have to be this way?  Can't the day after the Super Bowl just be considered a national holiday to spare us all from this sleep deprived fate?  Actually, that scenario may not be that far fetched.  Here's how. 

The third Monday in February is reserved to celebrate President's Day.  Since we already have a Monday in February off, why shouldn't this be aligned with our post-Super Bowl recovery?  Despite that our current President is known to be a big sports fan, it's unlikely that the week the holiday is celebrated will be changed (although early February would still put the holiday close to Lincoln's birthday, so it would still make sense).  Instead, the NFL could make a change that would not only benefit them, but the fans as well.

While it may have long since been forgotten with the excitement of the season, this NFL season was endangered by a lockout.  One of the issues that held up negotiations during the lockout was that the owners were pushing for the league to extend to an 18 game season.  While they tried to spin it as a change in favor of their fans, nothing could have been further from the truth.  It was all about money.  More games means more money to stuff into the pockets of the greedy owners, at the expense of their player's health.

Yet there's an easy alternative that should work for everyone.  Keep the current 16 game schedule, but add an extra week to the season by giving each team an additional bye week.  This would benefit the players by giving them another week off to rest and recover, as well as some extra practice time mid-season for coaches to work on fixing issues that may be plaguing their team.  This will also inevitably lead to a rise in the quality of games.  Even though their teams would be playing the same number of games, owners would still benefit financially.  The big money doesn't come from ticket sales, it comes from television.  An extra week added to the season means more money will be brought in from those TV contracts, which each team in the league splits revenue from. 

This extra week for the regular season would push the Super Bowl back another week.  If you just started the season a week later then the Super Bowl would then fall on the third Sunday of February, or the day before President's Day. 

It's such an easy solution that it's mind boggling that the change hasn't already been done.  Variations of this solution have been floated around before, but there's no indication that the league has ever seriously considered it.  Yet it's clear that it would benefit the players, owners and most of all, the fans.  Everyone wins.  So come on, NFL!  Let us honor our past President's while we recover from watching our Nation's biggest sporting event of the year.  It's what our forefathers would have wanted.