We Need Super Bowl Monday

I may be the only girl who does not have an unhealthy obsession with Tom Brady. In fact, I'll go so far as to say I hate the guy. For all I know he’s a very nice person (baby-momma drama notwithstanding), but I cannot forgive him for defeating my beloved St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. However, while I may never love Brady, I know that his presence in Super Bowl XLII piqued the interest of people like my four housemates. But they didn't watch just because of his beautifully chiseled cheekbones and rugged exterior. No, they, Justin-Timberlake-and-The-Notebook-loving girls, watched and will continue to watch the Super Bowl regardless of the handsome men involved. They have never even considered the fact that not watching the big game is an option.

Last week, as the five of us planned how we would finish our homework before Sunday's game, I found myself wishing I had Monday off. While I usually spend Sundays preparing for the coming week, on this particular Sunday I needed to devote myself to guacamole, commercials, and a historic Patriots defeat. I then began to wonder why the Monday after the Super Bowl has not yet been designated a national holiday. Beyond my own homework needs, there are a number of compelling reasons why the day following the Super Bowl should be a holiday celebrated by every red-blooded American.

First and foremost, the Super Bowl is a uniquely American event. The United States has given the world some of its favorite sports—Argentina and Europe regularly stock the NBA with fresh talent and have impressive leagues and national teams in their own rights. The same applies to Latin America, the Caribbean, and Japan with Major League Baseball. But football is different. Other than the short-lived NFL Europa and the decently solid Canadian Football League, attempts to export American football have been few and far between, and for good reason: American football just doesn’t stick elsewhere. It’s arguably the only sport America has created that has, in the long run, appealed only to North Americans. And "appealed" is a huge understatement: The NFL is the most popular, profitable professional sports league in the world, and college football is itself a multimillion-dollar industry. Like apple pie and McDonald’s, football is uniquely American.

Super Bowl Monday—there’s already a grassroots website devoted to the idea—would actually be more American than Columbus Day. Revisionist history has proven that Columbus was just as much an exploiter and murderer as he was an explorer. Objectively speaking, which seems more worthy of celebration, a distinctly American phenomenon or a rapacious plunderer?

And what about Valentine’s Day? It’s obviously just a holiday manufactured to get Americans to spend money and celebrate consumer culture. The Super Bowl is too, of course—but unlike Valentine’s Day, it doesn’t wrap itself in gaudy pink fur and pretend to be something else. The Super Bowl keeps it real—“This is really about football,” it tells us, winking, before cracking up. “Okay, just kidding—it’s about American excess.” Given the choice between a holiday that is open about celebrating the synthesis of all media for the sake of advertising, and one that’s fueled by many of the same forces but pretends to be about Finding True Love (and which backs up this assertion with an endless stream of gag-inducing cards and oversized teddy bears), I’ll take the former, thank you very much.

And in that same vein, the Super Bowl is also holiday-worthy because it offers something for just about everyone. Even without the cute guys, the NFL makes sure that non-football fans have plenty of other reasons to be attracted to the game, from the halftime show to the commercials. Those who complain about how commercialized the game has become are missing the point: The Super Bowl, as the ultimate celebration of consumer culture and the art of mass-media advertising, is now about more than just football. The game’s loud, shrill-voiced, oversexed accoutrements have become a part of the tradition and extend the appeal far beyond conventional football fans. Why else would so many millions of Americans who are otherwise uninterested in football tune in “just to watch the ads”?

More than anything, major holidays are about getting together with friends and family. The Super Bowl has mastered this part of the equation. I’ve already been asked multiple times this week about my Super Bowl plans. Even if the game, the commercials, or the halftime show do not appeal to someone, it is still highly probable that they will be in the presence of people watching the game. People gather together in varying group sizes to collectively eat, drink, and, well, be merry. In fact, it is similar to that other American holiday, Thanksgiving, in that there is an incredible—and totally secular—emphasis on togetherness. If binge eating and overexposure to other people does not constitute a holiday, I don’t know what does.

I am not going to say that not watching the Super Bowl is anti-American, because that would be an over-the-top claim. However, I can say rather confidently that not attending a Super Bowl event or not watching the game is be similar to not celebrating Thanksgiving, in that it would be going against an established American social norm.

There are also practical reasons for creating Super Bowl Monday—and not just because it would ease the hangover recovery periods for millions of Americans. For one thing, countless parents cruelly deprive their children of the opportunity to watch the Super Bowl—that is, to experience the ultimate lesson in how American culture and commerce work—simply because the game runs so late and kids have school in the morning. Super Bowl Monday would immediately erase this impediment toward creating the next generation of media-savvy American consumers.

In the end, people can complain all they want to about the scandals surrounding some professional football players, from Ray Lewis' murder charges to Michael Vick’s dog-fighting, but those blemishes do not make football any less American. Some athletes may misbehave, but the sport is still as beautiful as ever. Americans love football. Americans love spectacle. Americans love being told what to buy in as ostentatious a manner as possible. On Super Bowl Sunday, they combine all these loves for a few precious hours. Yesterday, they drank their beers, ate their wings, and enjoyed the game; I did, too, at the price of my schoolwork and my diet. Unfortunately, I still had to get up for my 8:50 class this morning because America has yet to create Super Bowl Monday. All I can do is hope that one day we will, much like I hope that the Rams will soon return to the Super Bowl. But, if you know anything about football, you know I am probably going to be waiting for quite some time.

Brittany Schulman is an Editorial Intern at Campus Progress.