I can’t believe I’m saying this but…is this a Roger Goodell win?
It’s not often that I give the NFL commissioner credit for…well, anything. (I’m also a Saints fan, so I still hold a grudge over the whole Bountygate thing a few years ago). But most of his decisions are objectively pretty bad, not to mention the uneven discipline that’s often applied throughout the league.
But this is an idea I think we can all get behind.
Of course every year during the playoffs we hear the same cries about the Super Bowl being held on a Sunday and having to turn around and go to work the next morning. And the suggestions for how to accomplish this are usually either moving the Super Bowl to Saturday from its traditional Sunday spot, or making the day after the Super Bowl a national holiday so nobody has to take off work (or more likely show up hungover and get nothing done).
Now, neither of those are going to happen. But Goodell has another idea for getting folks the day off after the Super Bowl: Move it to a weekend when everybody already has Monday off anyway.
The Super Bowl is traditionally played on the second Sunday in February. But luckily for the NFL, there’s already a built-in three day weekend on the calendar just a week later, with Presidents’ Day falling on the third Monday in February.
Presidents’ Day is a federal holiday, as well as a state holiday (though many states use different names) in most states, so it seems like a natural choice for the Super Bowl if the goal is to give a large portion of the audience the day off after pounding too many beers during the game.
And Goodell says he’d like to see the NFL and the Super Bowl eventually get there.
During the 2024 NFL Draft, the Commish stopped by ESPN to speak with Pat McAfee and talked about the future of the NFL schedule – and how he’d eventually like to do away with some of the meaningless preseason games:
“I’m not a fan of the preseason…But the reality is I think I’d rather replace a preseason game with a regular season any day. That’s just picking quality. So if we got to 18 [regular season games] and 2 [preseason games], that’s not an unreasonable thing.
The other thing it does…that ends up on Presidents’ Day weekend, which is a three day weekend, which makes the Sunday night and then you have Monday off.”
Now we’re talking.
Of course it doesn’t really matter to me either way. I don’t exactly have a traditional 9-5 job, and I work from home anyway. But I’m sure this is something that most NFL fans could get behind.
Credit where it’s due: Goodell’s on the right track with this one.
@espn #RogerGoodell on the possibility of an 18-game season in the #NFL that would put the #SuperBowl on President’s Day weekend 👀 (🎥 @Pat McAfee Show Clips) #nfldraft ♬ original sound – ESPN
