Mondays after the Super Bowl are notorious for the number of employees calling out of work.
WASHINGTON — Fans who support the push to have the day after the Super Bowl be an official holiday, you may have just found a big ally…Roger Goodell.
The NFL commissioner said Friday that while he thinks the current 17-game format is good, he’d like to see a schedule with just two preseason games and 18 regular season games.
“I think we’re good at seventeen [games] now, but listen, we’re always looking at how we continue. I’m not a fan of the preseason, I don’t think we need preseason,” Goodell said during an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” in Detroit for the NFL draft.
The commissioner pointed out that moving to a two and 18 schedule would put Super Bowl Sunday on Presidents Day weekend.
“That ends up on Presidents Day weekend, which is a three-day weekend, which makes the Sunday night and then you have Monday off,” Goodell described.
The NFL team owners voted in 2021 to increase the regular season to 17 games. It was the first time in 43 years the regular season slate had been increased.
When is Presidents Day?
Presidents Day, which falls on the third Monday of February, is a federal holiday, so government offices, the U.S. Postal Service and most banks and public schools are usually closed. However, major retail chains stay open, and many offer Presidents Day sales.
Why is the Super Bowl on a Sunday?
Ever since the championship game’s inception on Jan. 15, 1967, the Super Bowl has always been played on Sundays.
Naturally, Mondays after the Super Bowl are notorious for the number of employees calling out of work.
In 2023, a survey by the Workforce Institute found 18.1 million employees said they planned to miss work the day after the Super Bowl. More than 3 million admitted they planned to call in sick even though they weren’t actually feeling ill.
Additionally, 4.7 million workers admitted that they planned to “ghost” their employers and skip work without notice on that Monday.
One reason the National Football League is adamant about keeping the Super Bowl on Sundays is due to TV ratings, according to past comments from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
Melissa Hernandez de la Cruz contributed to this report.
