Two Tennessee lawmakers want a Super Bowl Monday in the state.
You say you have a Super Bowl hangover and that getting to work is going to be extremely difficult. You say you wish that someone will recognize that you are not the only one in this condition because you partied way too much because of the game? Fear not, there are two state legislators in Tennessee who feel your pain. Senator London Lamar, a Memphis democrat, and Representative Joe Towns Jr., also a Memphis democrat, introduced a bill that would make the first Monday after the Super Bowl a holiday in Tennessee. In the unlikely event that somehow this piece of legislation survives and gets passed, Tennessee would jettison the Columbus Day holiday for Super Bowl Monday.
Why would a football game cause politicians to introduce legislation making the day after the Super Bowl a holiday? In 2021, The Workforce Institute estimated that 16.1 million Americans were likely not going to work on the Monday after the Super Bowl. The Lamar-Towns proposal or SB1344 and HB1463, would change the Tennessee Code “by deleting the language ‘the second Monday in October, known as “Columbus Day;’ and by inserting the language ‘the first Monday after the Super Bowl, known as “Super Bowl Monday.” The Super Bowl is a quasi-national holiday. But there are some people who want to make the day after the game a national holiday. In 2013, there was a petition passed around that urged President Barack Obama to make the Super Bowl Monday a national holiday. It failed, but another petition surfaced in 2019, with about 15,000 people signing it and making a request of the federal government to make Super Bowl Monday a holiday. That petition failed to generate any political interest. There is absolutely no chance that the federal government is going to make Super Bowl Monday a holiday but it could happen in an individual state.
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