Super Bowl Monday

When I heard it on the news the other evening, I thought it was a joke.

But, no, there is a group organizing a campaign to have Super Bowl Monday declared a national holiday.

They have their own web site, so they must be real.

In any case, they're looking for folks to sign a petition to Congress to declare the day after the football Super Bowl a national holiday (or a day of observation, whatever that is). They've even got a bunch of suggestion names, including National Football Day, National Recovery Day, and Lombardi Day.

I will not be signing.

Although I will confess to being a bandwagon frontrunner who will watch the Super Bowl if the Patriots are playing in it, I generally don't care. I decided years ago that the SB spectacle is not to my liking. Too much hoopla, too much hype. Blechhh. I did watch last year to blog about the ads, but I generally and genuinely don't care.

But I don't mind the idea of another national holiday. We have such a chintzy amount compared to most of the industrialized world. So here are my suggestions:

• If we must have a sports-themed national holiday, I'd make it about baseball.  How about Start of Spring Training Day. Or Pitchers and Catchers Report Day. Maybe we could have the national holiday be Opening Day.
• National Don't Drive Your Car Day could replace Earth Day. Instead of people getting into their Volvos and Priuses to drive to an Earth Day celebration, everyone could just stay home. Give Mother Earth a little breather from all those rotten carbon emissions.
• Similarly, we could celebrate No Electronics Day, which could also be called Noises Off Day.
• April 15th - the holiday we all pay for.
• We could use a couple of national heritage days. How about We Were Here First Day to celebrate Native Americans, and, six months later, Huddled Masses Day, commemorating our immigrants.
• I'd like to see a Crap Free Day, on which no one would go to a WalMart or Christmas Tree Shoppe and buy useless crap that they don't need "because it's cute."

Yes, I can think of plenty of things worth declaring a national holiday over. The Super Bowl just isn't one of them.

The prospect of Super Bowl Monday turning into a Day Off is dim, of course.

Just look at how long it took MLK Day to get off the ground?