Should Monday After Super Bowl Be a National Holiday?
This Sunday, February 7, 2021, it's Super Bowl LV (and if you're a little Roman numeral ignorant like me) that's Super Bowl 55. Of course, this year's bowl features the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. If you're planning to watch, if for nothing more than the commercials, it will begin at 5:30 pm on CBS and the NFL Network.
For some people, this will be the biggest party of the year. Though, due to the pandemic, I'm sure the number of parties this year will be the fewest ever, but there will still be those who suffer from a major case of "Brown Bottle Flu" again on Monday, so if this year follows the trend of years past, lots of people won't be making it into work on Monday.
Apparently, last year 20% of all working American adults said they either took the day off on the Monday after the Super Bowl, or they strongly considered it. And even bigger than that is that almost half of all those people say they have taken that same day off at some point in their lives.
So, once again, this begs the question, "Should the Monday after the Super Bowl be a national holiday so we can all be off work to recover?"
In a new study, 40% of the respondents say HECK YEAH! But honestly, wouldn't most of us say yes to any poll asking us if we'd like another paid national holiday? I'm pretty sure I'd like every Monday to be a paid national holiday.
But, science enters the argument for this one specific holiday hopeful. A study found that people, on average, really are less productive the day after the Super Bowl, and it hurts the morale at companies with those who begrudgingly show up for work.
But really, should the Monday after the big game be a "National Holiday?"
Why not play the game on Saturday, so most would have Sunday to recuperate? What about other alternatives like moving the game back another week so it would land on the Sunday before President's Day which is already a national holiday?
Hey, there are several petitions on Change.org supporting the idea, so if it's important to you, you might want to sign up. But, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this one to go through.